Some cancers are more common in aging skin.
The underlying cause of skin cancer in older people is often the accumulated damage of many years of excessive exposure to the sun. All skin cancers can be successfully treated if they are discovered and treated early. It seldom metastasizes, although it may do so if the cancer invades lymph or blood vessels that can carry cancer cells to distant organs. The major spreading mechanism of basal cell carcinoma is by local invasion of surrounding skin tissue. If left untreated, it may become large and disfiguring.