NEW YORK, Jul 13 (Reuters Health) - Taking time to inspect your skin for
unusual looking moles and other suspicious spots pays off, researchers report.
In a study of people with the skin cancer melanoma, more than half detected the
cancer on their own.
But early-stage melanoma was most often detected by physicians or by people
who had a family history of the disease. Since survival odds are highest when
melanoma is detected early, the study highlights the need for improved awareness
about the disease, the authors note.
In the US, about 1 in 63 men and 1 in 85 women will develop melanoma.
Melanoma tends to be more dangerous than other types of skin cancer since it is
more likely to spread to other parts of the body.
In the study, Dr. Mary S. Brady and colleagues from Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center in New York questioned 471 melanoma patients about how their skin
cancer was first identified. According to the report in the July 15th issue of
the journal Cancer, in 57% of cases, the patient first noticed the skin cancer.
A physician detected it 16% of the time and a spouse detected it 11% of the
time.
Part of the reason that melanomas are most often detected first by patients
may be due to the fact that internists, family practitioners and gynecologists
often are not well trained in detecting skin cancer, the authors suggest.
Women appear to be doing a better job of looking for cancer on themselves
and their loved ones, the report indicates. Women detected their own cancer 69%
of the time, compared with 47% of the time in men. And of the 51 people whose
cancer was detected by a spouse, 46 were men.
But even though patients were more likely to detect melanoma than physicians
were, the professionals had the edge in detecting thin melanoma lesions--early
cancers that are highly treatable. Brady's team reports that physicians were 3.6
times more likely to detect these early-stage cancers than patients were. And
people with a family history of melanoma, who would presumably be more aware of
the disease, were 2.7 times more likely to detect thin lesions than people who
did not have a family history.
Brady and colleagues point out that "awareness of the disease by physicians
and the lay public is critical for early detection." The authors add that even
though the number of melanoma cases in Australia increased dramatically during
the 1980s, between 1990 and 1994 the death rate declined in women and leveled
off in men. The investigators suggest that media campaigns that encouraged
people and physicians to conduct skin cancer screenings may have been successful
in finding more cases early, when survival odds are higher.
