Home Skin Exam

Suggestions for a Skin Exam: The best time to perform a skin exam is after a shower or bath. You should check your skin in a room with plenty of light, and you should use a full-length mirror and a handheld mirror for this skin exam. Begin by learning where your birthmarks, moles, and other marks are and their usual look and feel.

Check for anything new, such as:

• A new mole that looks different from your other moles
• A new red or darker – colored flaky patch that may be a little raised
• A new flesh – colored firm bump
• A change in the size, shape, color, or feel of a mole
• A sore that does not heal

Check yourself from head to toe including:

1. Your back, scalp, genital area, and between your buttocks.
2. Your face, neck, ears, and scalp. You may want to use a comb or a blow dryer to move your hair so that you can see better. You also may want to have a relative or friend check through your hair. It may be hard to check your scalp by yourself.
3. The front and back of your body in the mirror. Then raise your arms and look at your left and right sides.
4. Bend your elbows. Look carefully at your fingernails, palms, forearms (including the undersides), and upper arms.
5. The back, front, and sides of your legs.
6. Your feet, including your toenails, your soles, and the spaces between your toes.

By doing a skin exam regularly, you will learn what is normal for you. It may be helpful to record the dates of your skin exams and to write notes about the way your skin looks. If your doctor has taken photos of your skin, you can compare your skin to the photos to help check for changes. If you find anything unusual, talk with your doctor as soon as possible.

What is Melanoma

Melanoma is a type of skin cancer in which a pigmented skin cell, called a melanocyte, has lost its normal growth patterns, resulting in uncontrolled growth of the cells.  Characteristics of a “mole” which suggest melanoma are those moles with a variegated color, irregular border, and any mole with ulceration. Any change in a mole such as darkening, bleeding or ulceration mandates biopsy.

Melanoma can occur anywhere in the body: the trunk, extremities, face, ears, the back of the eye and the gastrointestinal tract and occasionally in the nail bed. The incidence is increasing faster than any other cancer. Those individuals at greatest risk of developing melanoma are those with family history of melanoma, personal history of previous melanoma, sensitivity to sun, fair complexion and exposure to sunlight.

Location on the trunk rather than the extremities and delay in diagnosis are the other two major factors in increasing fatality of this disease. Once a melanoma has reached a depth of the skin of greater than 0.76 mm, there is a significant risk of lymph node metastases and methods are now available to help predict the presence or absence of this particular type of spread.

Please get your moles checked!

Typical Steps in the Diagnosis of Melanoma

Found on www.melanoma.com

1. You find a suspicious mole or growth on your skin. You report it to your doctor.

2. The doctor refers you to a dermatologist, a skin specialist.

3. The dermatologist does an excisional biopsy and sends a sample of the growth to the lab. The pathologist at the lab checks the sample under a microscope to see if it is melanoma.

4. If it is melanoma, the dermatologist refers you to a surgeon for a sentinel lymph node or SLN biopsy. (Sometimes, the surgeon will remove the entire tumor and do the SLN biopsy at the same time, combining steps 3 and 4.)

5. If the dermatologist or surgeon has not yet removed the entire tumor and some surrounding skin, that happens next.

6. If tests show that melanoma has spread to nearby lymph nodes, the surgeon may remove those lymph nodes to help stop the cancer from spreading further.

7. If the melanoma has spread to the lymph nodes, you may have more tests including: blood tests, ultrasound, chest x-rays, or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to check if the cancer has also spread to other organs.

8. After all surgery is completed, an oncologist (a doctor who specializes in cancer) may prescribe other treatments. These are called adjuvant treatments, and they may be in the form of immunotherapy, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy.