‘Dancing With the Stars’ Judge Len Goodman To Return After Skin Cancer Surgery; How to Best Protect Yourself From The Sun

"I had a tiny little mole thing on the side of my head, probably from being out and playing golf and whatever," Goodman told ITV's Good Morning Britain last year, "and it was such a simple process. The doctor put a few injections around it, took it out and I'm back to my gorgeous self."

"It's so important that we do keep covered up," he added. "I used to wear a baseball cap but now I wear a straw hat which fully covers the forehead and so on. I put a lot of Factor 50 (sunscreen) on my face when I play golf and fingers crossed everything is going to be gorgeous."

Related: DWTS Judge, Len Goodman, Shares Image of Recent Skin Cancer Surgery to Implore Us: 'Take The Issue Seriously!'

Since his surgery was a success, Goodman was set to return to Dancing with the Stars for season 29, but coronavirus travel restrictions kept the ballroom dancing professional in the U.K. Longtime Dancing with the Stars dancer, Derek Hough, replaced Goodman as a judge on the show the first season in the show's history without Goodman.

There will now be four judges on the show rather than three as Goodman will return to his judging post on Sept. 20, alongside Carrie Ann Inaba, Bruno Tonioli and Hough.

Goodman's Cancer Battles

This wasn't Goodman's first fight with cancer; in March 2009, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that was thankfully caught early during an annual check-up. But the prostate cancer didn't sideline him from Dancing with the Stars as he waited until after the show's finale to have his cancerous tumor removed that year.

Goodman was 65 at the time of his surgery and told the Daily Mail that year he felt "right as rain" after the operation. He returned to Dancing with the Stars that fall for the show's next season.

It isn't clear when Goodman was diagnosed with skin cancer and what kind as the star only revealed his mole removal surgery in August 2020.

Lots of people assume they only have to worry about harmful sun rays in the summer but in reality, we should all be protecting our skin all year round.

The Importance of Protecting Your Skin From The Sun; What Is Melanoma?

Whether you have skin cancer or not, protecting yourself from the sun is extremely important.

Dr. Cecilia Larocca, a dermatologist at the Cutaneous (Skin) Cancer Treatment Center at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Mass., tells SurvivorNet that something as simple as putting sunscreen on can reduce your chances of getting skin cancer, specially melanoma by up to 50%.

"When it comes to squamous cell, basal cell and melanoma, even some rare cancers like Merkel cell carcinoma, protecting ourselves from the sun can reduce that risk," she said. "I love telling my melanoma patients when they come in that that's one thing they can really take control over when they come home."

"When it comes to melanoma, if you use sunscreen, there was this great study that came out of Australia that if patients used sunscreen consistently over a period of ten years, they were actually able to reduce their risk for melanoma by 50 percent," she added.

It's also important to understand what exactly melanoma is.

Larocca explained that melanoma is a cancer of the mole. (Goodman had a mole removed from his forehead last year.)

"But it doesn't necessarily have to arrive from a pre-existing mole," she added. "So the most important thing to do whenever you have a mole that you're worried about is to get it evaluated."

"When we evaluate a mole it's also very important for us to get a good sense of what your family history is and what your sun exposure history (is)," she explained. "It's (also) important for us not just to look at that one mole that you're worried about, but actually look at your entire body."

For most people, there are simple ways to significantly reduce your risk of developing skin cancer.

"It's very likely that perhaps there's another spot on the body that we're more concerned about rather than that one mole, but also helps us sort of get a feel for how atypical that one mole is that you're presenting to us, and we only can get a sense of that by looking at the entire body."

Melanoma is, overall, more common in men than women, but before the age of 50, the rates are higher in women than men, according to the American Cancer Society. The risk of developing this type of skin cancer also increases as you age; 65 is the average age of diagnosis.

However, melanoma is not uncommon, according to the society, even among those younger than age 30; it's one of the most common cancers in young adults, especially women.

Moral of the story: wear your sunscreen.

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