How to spot bad mole? by Aleksandr Kavokin, MD/PhD

How to spot malignant mole?

This morning you took a bath. The warm water feels so nice during the cold winter day. There was some funny skin itching on you back. You looked in the mirror, turned this way , that way. There is small mole on your back You remember this spot had been there for years, since childhood. Did this spot get that strange itching?

Recently you have heard the news that there are more than 50000 of new melanoma cases every year. This number grows 3% a year.

What is going on? Is this small spot on you back went out of control?

Several types of skin tumors exist. Many are slow growers. Many give rare metastasis. Simple removal cure majority of skin tumors.

Melanoma brings troubles big time.

Melanos = black, oma = tumor.

You can detect melanoma by self-exam. Skin cancers show themselves much easier than any other types of cancer.

In the same time you can cure melanoma by simple surgical resection. However, catch this tumor in early stage. Late stage metastasize. Surgeon can not cut off every metastasis in your body.

There are numerous sites dedicated to melanoma self-exam. Just type in the word "melanoma" into any search engine. Follow instructions.

Fair skin people have more chances of getting melanoma. However, dark skin people develop melanoma too.

Everybody has moles. Women even use moles to charm. How to find if your mole became dangerous?

Dangerous signs include ABCD:

Asymmetry

Border

Color

Diameter

A- asymmetry. Suspicious mole does not look like a round or oval blot. Often, early melanoma looks rather like a blot with an odd shape.

B- borders. Borders become irregular, uneven, fuzzy. The edges of the blots become notched.

C- color. Color of normal mole should be more or less homogenous. Change in color is very suspicious . There are shades of brown, black, tan, red. Mottled color is suspicious.

D- diameter. Change in diameter is suspicious too. Mole that is bigger than 6 mm is suspicious. Everybody compares 6 mm to a pencil eraser (though few people actually use it extensively). Just to get idea about the borderline size.

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BIO:

Aleksandr Kavokin MD/PhD, Phila
http://www.kavokin.com
Aleksandr Kavokin, MD1994 Russia,PhD1997 Russia - Immunology and Allergy, postdoc at Cancer Center at Med U of South Carolina, postdoc at Yale - Cardiology, Molecular Medicine. http://www.kavokin.com http://www.kavokin.uni.cc http://www.geocities.com/aging_rejuvenation/ http://www.appendicitis.uni.cc/ http://www.geocities.com/appendicitis_disease/

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