Actinic cheilitis is known commonly by the names sailors’ lips or farmers’ lips as the ailment affects the lower lips of a person. It is actually a form of actinic keratosis where small rashes, often with scaly surfaces appear on the lower lips of a person.

Normally this type of problem is seen in people who spend lots of time outdoors in the open sun and has been doing so for quite a long time. It is often called cumulative sun damage for this nature.

Whether a person has actinic cheilitis will be evident from the signs like –

•    Continuously chapped or dry lips
•    Wrinkled lips with painless lesions
•    Ulcers on the lips
•    Pale lips with whitish plaques
•    Sometimes puffiness of the lips is observed

Commonly the persons who can get actinic cheilitis are those who are elderly (above the age of 50) and the fair skinned people. Though the main cause of actinic cheilitis is UV rays of the sun, long term tobacco use is also one of the reasons and those people who smoke a lot can get actinic cheilitis too. Poor oral hygiene and ill fitting dentures too can lead to the ailment.

The risk that actinic cheilitis carries is that it is a precancerous state and it has been seen that often 10 percent of the total cases of actinic cheilitis turns to squamous cell carcinoma or lip cancer. Since it has not still been identified as which types of actinic cheilitis can develop into cancer, the physicians feel that all lesions should be treated properly.

Normally treatment of actinic cheilitis involves medication with 5-fluorouracil and imiquimod; surgical processes like use of cryosurgery, electro surgery, scalpel vermilionectomy, carbon dioxide laser vaporization and also chemical peels. Since all of these removal methods involve removal of the damaged epithelial cells, they may involve some degree of pain.

The medication process using 5-fluorouracil results in initial inflammation but after a treatment lasting 2 to 4 weeks, it almost completely removes any scar and does minimal damage to the skin tissues. Imiquimod acts on the immune response system and results in the death of the tumor cells. This also leaves no scar after the treatment. But in both cases they are effective in the minor actinic cheilitis.