Educating patients and the importance of dermatoscopes
Skin Cancer Awareness Month focuses on the importance of looking after our skin. We know that it’s not just your job as their practitioner, but it’s about educating patients to help ease the burden on you. Skin is the largest organ in the body, and ensuring patients protect their skin from harmful UV rays and educating them about how to perform routine skin checks has never been more important.
That’s why for this month of May and throughout Skin Cancer Awareness Month, we’re offering you free skin rulers, which will help educate your patients of the ABCDE rule, while helping you measure, monitor and if biopsy is required, ensuring you get the right size punch for the job. If you’d like to receive a free skin ruler, please fill out the form here and we’ll get them sent to your practice.
As we’re sure you’re aware, skin cancer is the most common form of cancer. Research conducted by Melanoma UK has found that there are over 100,000 new cases diagnosed each year in the UK, with sadly over 2,500 dying because of this disease. Increasing public awareness is at the centre of Melanoma UK’s campaign this month, and we’re sponsoring them on their new yearlong campaign, where we’ll be travelling around the country with them to help educate, assess, and diagnose skin conditions. We’re also supporting Melanoma UK’s searching for the missing melanomas by donating 10 world-renowned DermLite dermatoscopes, if your practice doesn’t have one and you’d like to enter to win one, you can do so below.
Many patients do not know they have skin cancer until it is too late, often the difference between life and death due to melanomas is early detection. Further research shows that stage one and two melanomas can be cured by minor surgeries, while approximately 86 out of every 100 people diagnosed with Melanoma in England and Wales will survive at least 5 years. Our goal is to support you, health care professionals to have the best tools for the job and ensuring we can improve this number together.
Can you spot it?
Your patients don’t have to be trained medical professionals to spot skin cancer. It’s as simple as educating them about their ABC’s. Using the ABCDE rule and performing a 10-minute skin check every month can save lives, reduce unnecessary appointments, and help those patients who do need help receive it as quickly and efficiently as possible.
The importance of a dermatoscope
Your eyes are good, but not as good as a DermLite dermatoscope . When diagnosing a mole or lesion, colour can be a diagnostic aid in which the human eye simply cannot detect. Dermatoscopes offer precise analysis of the colour, shape, symmetry, and other key features which help aid in a precise diagnosis. For example, utilising the DermLite DL4’s PigmentBoost and PigmentBoost Plus features help maximise the visualisation of pigmented structures within skin lesions, especially for those with darker skin tones. Dermatoscopes also offer different types of light such as polarised and non-polarised to help you get a full understanding and see between different layers of the skin. Using both in combination helps to improve diagnosis accuracy.
In fact, research shows that using a dermatoscope improves the accuracy of diagnosis by up to 27% when compared to the naked eye. Using a dermatoscope reduces un-needed biopsies, as precise identification of cancerous lesions can be made through simple inspections. It also results in less missed melanomas and ultimately, saves lives.
If you’d like to learn more about how dermatoscopes can help support you in your patient care, get in touch with us here.
