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NetWellness provides the highest quality health information and education services created and evaluated by faculty of our partner universities.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
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NetWellness provides the highest quality health information and education services created and evaluated by faculty of our partner universities.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
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Skin Care and Diseases |
Bowen`s Disease09/27/1999 |
What is Bowen`s Disease?
Bowen`s disease is the technical term for a sqaumous cell carcinoma in situ located in the skin.The skin can form many types of cancers. The most dangerous are melanomas and are derived from melanocytes also called pigment cells. Bowen`s cancers are derived from keratinocytes or skin cells.
Cancers of skin cells do not just develop suddenly. They go through stages. The earliest stages are not visible by examination of the skin (or other organ) under a microscope. The abnormality is in the genes of the affected cell.
As the cancer progresses and the cells become more abnormal, they become visible histologically. In the skin the first evidence that cells are progressing toward cancer are the appearance of abnormal cells, those that are too large, the nuclei are too dark or funny shaped or some other alteration in the appearance of the cell. At this point the pathologist would note that the skin is abnormal but not yet a cancer.
As the process continues, the cells in the epidermis (the outermost layer of the skin) take on many but not all of the features of a cancer. The abnormal cells remain in the epidermis only but have all the features of a cancer. This is BOWEN`S disease. These lesions should be treated as a precancer and are 100% curable. If permitted to remain, these lesions will progress to a full cancer and the cells will migrate into the dermis, the next layer of the skin. After some more time (months to years), the cells in the dermis will spread to lymph nodes or other organs like the lung or liver.
The most common cause of Bowen`s lesions is sunlight but there are other causes such as exposure to arsenic (rare today). Sometimes there are no known causes for the Bowen`s lesion.
A person should not be frightened by a Bowen`s lesion but should have it removed and have periodic examinations to insure they do not have additional precancers or cancers in the future.
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James J. Nordlund, MD Professor Department of Dermatology College of Medicine University of Cincinnati |
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