The next time you clip your toenails, take a closer look at the rest of your feet as an extra 60 seconds could save your life. According to foot and ankle surgeons, routine self-examinations of the feet are an important way to find skin cancer early, when it?s easiest to cure. Half of the people who learn they have melanoma of the foot die within five years because the cancer had already spread throughout their body by the time it was diagnosed.

Nearly 60,000 people will learn they have melanoma this year. It?s not known how many of those cases will involve the foot, but more than 8,100 melanoma patients will die nearly one death every hour. However, if melanoma is detected in its

earliest stages, 92 per cent of patients will remain alive after five years. Unlike many other types of cancer, melanoma strikes people of all age groups, even the young. Whites are 10 times more likely to develop melanoma than blacks. Studies also suggest that more than half of melanoma cases in blacks involve the foot, where late diagnosis leads to a higher death rate.