Actinic cheilitis is an acute or chronic lesion provoked by exaggerated exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet rays. The chronic form is most common on the lower lip of fair or white skinned individuals, generally those that work outdoors, and it can affect the labial semimucosa completely with diverse lesions such as: scaling of the lip, fissures, erosions, ulcerations almost always very painful and with a tendency to bleed easily. Posteriorly they are covered in bloody scabs that again cause pain and bleeding if one tries to remove them.  With time, a scarlike epithelium that is atrophic and not much vascularized is produced, which predisposes the individual to lip cancer.

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