Skin cancer 'causes two to three deaths a day in Spain', but is 98% curable if caught early

BETWEEN two and three people die every day in Spain from late-diagnosed skin cancer, medics warn – and around 4,000 patients are diagnosed with malignant melanoma every year.

The outcome is very positive indeed for melanomas discovered at an early stage, and at present they only account for 1.5 per cent of all cancerous tumours found in humans, with an equal incidence for men and for women.

It is the fifth-most frequent form of cancer in men and the sixth-most common in women, is most likely to occur between the ages of 40 and 70, and the increase in the number of cases seen in recent years is as rapid as that of lung, liver and thyroid cancers.

Skin cancer is the least-dangerous and most-curable if diagnosed early, with most being successfully treated with surgery and, if it has not spread to the nearest lymph nodes, 98 per cent of patients are alive and cancer-free five years after diagnosis.

But they are becoming more and more common and patients are becoming younger, with a rise of seven per cent of cases per year in men and women aged 25 to 29.

Melanoma is practically always caused by exposure to the sun's harmful UV rays or through salon sunbeds, but awareness and prevention continues to be low, say oncologists and dermatologists.

And hospitals in areas popular with tourists and expatriates say foreigners are the most likely to suffer skin cancer.

The district hospital in Dénia (Alicante) on the northern Costa Blanca says seven in 10 new diagnoses are in British patients.

Recent research has uncovered the genetic mutation mainly responsible for causing skin cancer, known as BRAF, which is present in 40 per cent of advanced cases of malignant melanoma.

This has led to the creation of pharmaceutical drugs designed to block the BRAF mutation, which help to increase survival and quality of life in patients.