Every year nearly one million people in the United States learn that they have skin cancer according to the National Cancer Institute. Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in the United States, Australia and South Africa. Skin cancer is the most common type of cancer in both men and women.

The two most common kinds of skin cancer are basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. (Carcinoma is cancer that begins in the cells that cover or line an organ.) Basal cell carcinoma accounts for more than 90 percent of all skin cancers in the United States. It’s a slow growing cancer that seldom spreads to other parts of the body.

Squamous cell carcinoma also rarely spreads, but it does more often than basal cell carcinoma. It is important that skin cancers be found and treated early because they can invade and destroy nearby tissue. Basal Cell Carcinoma occurs from sun exposure and it occurs occurs many years after exposure. 

Another type of cancer that occurs in the skin is melanoma, which begins in the melanocytes.