What are the early stages of nail cancer?

What are the early stages of nail cancer? What are the early stages of nail cancer?, What does the start of nail cancer look like?, How do you tell if you have cancer from your nails?, Can you survive nail cancer?, Is nail cancer Painful?

What are the early stages of nail cancer?

Split, crack or deform in some way. Have an irregular pigment (the discoloration isn't even). Swell or be inflamed. Lift away from your nail bed. Develop an ulcer, nodule or start to bleed. Discolor the skin surrounding the nail (Hutchinson sign). Jan 2, 2024

What does the start of nail cancer look like?

Subungual melanoma often starts as a brown or black streak under a toenail or fingernail. A person may mistake it for a bruise. The main symptoms of subungual melanoma include: brown or black streaks in the nail without any known injury.

How do you tell if you have cancer from your nails?

The survival rates can get lower depending on how advanced the condition is when diagnosed and treated. If subungual melanoma is diagnosed at its final stage, or Stage IV, the survival rate is 15% to 20% at five years and 10% to 15% at 10 years.


Can you survive nail cancer?

Subungual melanoma presents as brown-black discolorations of the nail bed. It can present as either a streak of pigment or irregular pigmentation. The discoloration can progress to thickening, splitting, or destruction of the nail with pain and inflammation.

Is nail cancer Painful?

Between regular dermatologist visits, you can check for signs of skin cancer under your nails at home. Be on the lookout for any of the following signs: Dark streak under the nail. The streak may appear as a brown or black band in the nail.

What color is nail cancer?

The most common symptom of subungual melanoma is a discolored line that appears on your nail. It's usually brown or black and runs from top to bottom (vertical). In some cases, the line can be irregularly shaped and increase in length and width over time.

How do I know if my nail line is melanoma?

Melanoma of the nail unit most often starts as a narrow brown to black pigmented band, visible on the length of a single nail plate (melanonychia). It is most prevalent in the nail of the thumb or big toe. It is not easy to differentiate from a benign lentigo or naevus (mole) in its early stages.

What does Stage 1 nail melanoma look like?

You can also get toenail fungus from the overgrowth of fungi in, under, or on the nail. The two conditions can look similar, but toenail fungus is more common. Toenail melanoma is another name for subungual melanoma, which means “under the nail.” Toenail fungus is also called onychomycosis.


What can be mistaken for nail melanoma?

If the physician suspects that the patient might have subungual melanoma, they'll likely order a biopsy—they'll collect a tissue sample from the affected nail and send it to a pathologist, who will carefully examine the cells to determine whether they're cancerous.

How do doctors check for nail cancer?

The main symptom is melanonychia, or a pigmented vertical streak on the nail. Some people have likened it to a line drawn by a Sharpie. That doesn't mean it's always automatically worrisome because such streaks are much more common in patients with darker skin, Patel noted.

Is nail cancer always a line?

Subungual melanoma is treated surgically. Your doctor will first remove your entire nail and then remove the growth. To date, surgery is the only viable treatment method for this type of melanoma.

Can you get rid of nail cancer?

Prognosis for melanoma on the nail

Like other forms of melanoma, subungual melanoma can metastasize (spread) to other parts of the body if left untreated.


What happens if nail cancer goes untreated?

Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), together with Bowen's disease, the in situ form of SCC, is the most common malignant tumor of the nail and is usually slow growing [1].

Is nail cancer slow growing?

What does melanoma under a toenail look like? Melanoma under the toenail looks very much like a fungal toenail. The nail can be thickened, discolored, and deformed – just like a fungal toenail. Sometimes melanoma under the nail has black streaks, or even digs in just like an ingrown toenail.

How can you tell the difference between nail fungus and melanoma?

What is subungual melanoma? A subungual melanoma is a skin cancer that form in the finger or toe nailbeds. “It's a pretty rare subtype. However because of that it could be missed and could go on for years without being recognized,” Dr.