Melanoma needs surveillance - Health Channel

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Melanoma needs surveillance |

A pigmented lesion is shown in a digital imaging while Dr. Geoffrey Young, Chief of Head & Neck Surgery at Miami Cancer Institute explains that Melanoma is changing pigmented lesion and when it has any change it should be biopsied.

He also says that people with other cancer melanomas or strong family histories may need more increased surveillance.

Transcript

We actually have a picture of what melanoma will actually look like if we see it in a patient so this is something here can one of you just kind of describe what we’re looking at and I know like my dermatologist has told me about these factors before but if you could explain them to our viewers absolutely so this this is a great slide is what we call the ABCD and you know even a E has been added on to that as well of melanomas so what you’re seeing here is as a pigmented lesion everybody has pigmented lesions on their body but really melanoma is changing pigmented lesion and what you’re looking at is asymmetry you can see that this is not a perfect circle or a perfect oval it has very asymmetric borders and B is the border notice that the color change on the border it’s different than the central part of the lesion C leading into color obviously the the darker color and different forms of pigment around the lesion are concerning and D is diameter so the wider it gets the more concerning the lesion gets and if it’s growing or extending lots of problem as well and I think there’s an also a new D and that’s a dermis Coupee lot of dermatologists are trained in a special skill of using a special lens to look at these lesions and they can better characterize them before a biopsy as to how suspicious they are if they can be watched or if they should be biopsied okay now again I see my dermatology on an annual basis is that what you’d recommend for people as far as getting moles checked or is there a different time frame that might actually be better so I think that for the general population that’s reasonable but people with history of other skin cancers melanomas may need more increased surveillance people with genetic conditions as we just spoke about or strong family histories may also need more increased surveillance
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