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Common Conditions of Genitalia
Tumours of the skin
This chapter has been compiled with the help of skin specialist Dr. Jitender Arora.)
Yhe excessive Exposure of the skin to sunrays can lead to cancer of the skin. Thus sunbathing, the latest health trend, needs proper precautions. The sunlight, particularly during its peak four hours, can lead to solar keratosis, tumours, nevi, basal and squamous, cell carcinoma and the melanomas. So the best precautionary measure is shelter from the sun and protective sunscreen lotions or creams while sunbathing, though proper clothing is equally important.
Benign Tumours
These are the seborrhoeic warts, and consist of a benign growth of epithelium, a pigmented velvety, warty surface. They are relatively more common, both on covered and uncovered surfaces. These can also be mistaken for melanomas of cutaneous neoplasma.
Nevi
The nevus cells and nevi are almost always benign and everybody may have it at one stage of life or the other. They usually appear in children and are fibrosed during old age. The pigmented congenital nevi presents a greater tendency to form melanoma. They junctional nevi has nevus cells on both sides of the epidermal junction and consists of clear nevus cells along with some melanin. If it grows rapidly, darkens or bleeds, surgical consultation becomes essential. Likewise, other nevi are compound nevi. Blue nevi, and epithelial nevi.
Premalignant Tumours
The premalignant tumours are the borderline stage. So if controlled at this stage they can be cured. The solar keratoses are flesh-coloured and coarse to touch. But if they degenerate, they become the squamous cell carcinoma. In people with fair complexions, they occur mostly on the exposed parts. Nonactinic keratoses occur due to arsenic exposures. The cells are typical and similar to those of squamous cell epitheliomas, but these changes are well contained by an intact epidermal-dermal junction.
Malignant Tumours
Squamous cell carcinoma occurs on the exposed parts of such people who sunburn easily and tan poorly. They may arise out of actinic or solar keratoses, and attain a diameter of one centimeter just within two weeks. The lesions are small, red conical, hard nodules which have a quick tendency to ulcertate. Metastasis may occur early. The treatment of choice is surgical excision and even X-ray radiation is useful.
The basal cell carcinoma also occurs mostly on the exposed parts, but these lesions grow very slowly and attain a size of 1 cm after about a year. The appearance is waxy and the metastasis almost never occur. The neglected lesions may ulcerate and produce great destruction of even vital organs. The treatment is almost the same as in squamous cell carcinoma.
Paget’s disease may occur around the nipple because of the manifestation of apocrine sweat gland carcinoma, and may also occur in the genitalia. The malignant melanoma vary from macule to nodule with a surprising play of colours from flesh tints to pitch black, and a frequent mixture of while, blue, purple and red. The border tends to be irregular and the growth may be rapid. The treatment consists of wide surgical excision with lymphnodes. Asreports confirm out of three human cancer cases, one is a case of skin cancer while one out of a hundred is a melanoma.
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