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A Little Lump Or Bump On The Eyelid? Beware, It Could Be Skin Cancer!

The Doctor Weighs In
7 min readApr 22, 2020

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By: Patricia Salber MD, MBA

The eyelid area is a common area for non-melanoma skin cancers, such as basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma, accounting for about 5–10% of all skin cancers.

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This is actually a bit of an odd story. A while back, my grown-up son decided to get the small lump on his lower eyelid checked out. His doc really didn’t think it was much of anything but decided to remove it. Luckily, he sent the specimen to pathology. It turned out to be a skin cancer — a basal cell carcinoma to be exact.

Related: Skin Cancer can Increase the Risk of Other Cancers

Fast forward, one year later

Fast forward, about a year later, I find a teensy tiny lump on my lower lid. Even though it seemed unlikely that my son and I would both have basal cell cancers of the lower lid, I decided to get it checked out.

The dermatologist I went to was sure it was just a cyst. She took a scalpel and cut it off. However, she did not send the specimen to pathology. In retrospect, this was a mistake.

Four or five months later, the little lump returned so I went back to her. Again, she didn’t think it was much of anything (an indication of how benign these things look), but she…

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The Doctor Weighs In
The Doctor Weighs In

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