A manual labourer ignored a skin lesion for three years until it grew into a five-inch dragon horn sticking out of his back - and turned out to be cancerous. The 50-year-old man, who is anonymous, only alerted medics to his skin problem after the “enormous” ‘cutaneous horn’ grew to 14cm in length and 5.8cm in width. Medics at the Countess of Chester Hospital were stunned to find that despite the slow growth of the tumour, the cancer hadn’t spread to any other part of the patient’s body, despite the fact he’d never received treatment. The tumour was removed under general anaesthetic, and the large hole was sealed using a skin graft from his thigh. The British Medical Journal reported the man was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and while the cancer can be aggressive it is not usually life-threatening. They wrote: “We report a rare case of an extremely large well-differentiated SCC that was neglected by a patient living in a developed country with access to free healthcare. “This highlights that despite current public skin cancer awareness and rigorous healthcare measures, cases like this can still arise and slip through the net.” Usually, SCC begins as a firm pink lump with a crusted surface. A lot of surface scale covers the area and sometimes a spiky horn develops. The lump is often tender to touch, bleeds easily and may develop into an ulcer. It is unclear why a horn can develop, but the odd formations often appear on the face or ears. Men are more at risk of developing the unusual cancer, as are people exposed to the human papillomavirus (HPV), sunlight and chronic scarring conditions. Other risk factors include age, light skin and exposure to sunlight. However in this seemingly one-off case, the patient had no significant sun exposure, no family history of skin malignancy and was not immunosuppressed, that is, when someone is not able to respond normally to an infection. It is the second most common skin cancer in the UK, after melanoma.
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A manual labourer ignored a skin lesion for three years until it grew into a five-inch dragon horn sticking out of his back - and turned out to be cancerous. The 50-year-old man, who is anonymous, only alerted medics to his skin problem after the “enormous” ‘cutaneous horn’ grew to 14cm in length and 5.8cm in width. Medics at the Countess of Chester Hospital were stunned to find that despite the slow growth of the tumour, the cancer hadn’t spread to any other part of the patient’s body, despite the fact he’d never received treatment. The tumour was removed under general anaesthetic, and the large hole was sealed using a skin graft from his thigh. The British Medical Journal reported the man was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and while the cancer can be aggressive it is not usually life-threatening. They wrote: “We report a rare case of an extremely large well-differentiated SCC that was neglected by a patient living in a developed country with access to free healthcare. “This highlights that despite current public skin cancer awareness and rigorous healthcare measures, cases like this can still arise and slip through the net.” Usually, SCC begins as a firm pink lump with a crusted surface. A lot of surface scale covers the area and sometimes a spiky horn develops. The lump is often tender to touch, bleeds easily and may develop into an ulcer. It is unclear why a horn can develop, but the odd formations often appear on the face or ears. Men are more at risk of developing the unusual cancer, as are people exposed to the human papillomavirus (HPV), sunlight and chronic scarring conditions. Other risk factors include age, light skin and exposure to sunlight. However in this seemingly one-off case, the patient had no significant sun exposure, no family history of skin malignancy and was not immunosuppressed, that is, when someone is not able to respond normally to an infection. It is the second most common skin cancer in the UK, after melanoma.
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