basal-cell carcinoma

I must be getting old because I forgot to wear shoes, not unlike, uh, Wade Graham.

[laughs] Uh, I, I was getting a, uh, BCC taken off my back, a basal cell carcinoma.

And I, I got in the car assuming-- uh, thinking I was gonna put thongs on and off I go.

Got out at the other end, no thongs, no shoes at all, so I had to walk.

By the way, what-

You can go now if you like

... what's a BCC?

A basal cell carcinoma.

Yeah, so this is one of those funny things where you look at the epidemiological studies and you can see that people who get diagnosed with basal cell carcinomas, which is the most common, that's probably responsible for three, three and a half million of those cases.

People who get diagnosed with BCCs have... better health outcomes and better longevity than people who don't get diagnosed with BCCs at the same age, which sounds crazy.

But what and it doesn't mean the BCC is actually good for you.

What it means is that the people who tend to get BCCs tend to be healthy people.

They're getting those BCCs because they're out in the sun, living a healthy lifestyle.

And the BCC doesn't negatively impact that health at all.

So it's an indicator that you're living a healthy lifestyle, strangely enough.

This episode will feature quick article summaries and Dr. Lee's rapid pearls from articles published in the August issue of Dermatologic Surgery.

Our first communication article is Basal Cell Carcinoma Arising in a Congenital Apocrine Nevus by first author Cheyenne Hornback and senior author Mary Maloney.

Most dermatologic surgeons will never encounter a pure apocrine nevus, making this month's case report both educational and memorable.

Apocrine nevi are exceedingly rare congenital hamartomas composed of mature apocrine glands with only a handful of cases described in the literature.

They most commonly present as stable scalp nodules with focal alopecia and are generally considered benign.

The authors describe this case of a thirty-nine-year-old woman with a lifelong scalp birthmark who developed superficial basal cell carcinoma within the lesion.

Mohs micrographic surgery cleared the basal cell in two stages, and histopathologic examination of the debulk specimen revealed underlying congenital lesion to be a true apocrine nevus rather than the more f- familiar nevus sebaceous.

Remarkably, this represents only the second reported case of basal cell carcinoma arising within a pure apocrine nevus.