Acting on Skin Cancer

Doing something versus not doing something about a skin cancer you know you have. This is Dr. Steven Andrew Davis, Speaking of Health. If a doctor sees someone on the street or in a subway or at a ballgame who has a suspicious growth on their nose – a growth that looks cancerous – should the doctor say anything about it. I would, and I do. The worse that can happen to me, most likely, would be to be told to mind my own business. The best that could happen would be for the person to see his or her dermatologist or family doctor and have the growth properly treated.

Sounds like a straight-forward scenario and yet physicians not infrequently see patients who’ve left everything from breast lumps to skin lumps go untreated. One man I saw recently knew that the growth on his nose was a skin cancer, but didn’t see much harm to it. What this nice fellow didn’t know, apparently, was that some seemingly banal skin cancers can have extensive roots which can ultimately destroy a nose, an eye or ear and at times even cause death.

We are talking skin cancer here, but the same idea can apply to a breast, colon, pelvic or brain structure. Sure maybe it’s okay not to fix something that doesn’t seem broken but only Superman, among bipeds, has the natural x-ray vision to see beneath the surface. The rest of us need doctors and biopsies, microscopes or scans to see below the surface. For a copy of this script and journal reference, access our web site, www.speakingofhealth.com. Speaking of Health, I’m Dr. Steven Andrew Davis for CBS News.