In a recent post, I suggested having winter or summer vacations be your “calendar reminder” of times to do skin self-examinations and book your MoleSafe annual check-ups. But I liked the idea that the Skin Cancer Foundation posted last week for Valentine’s Day: a mutual skin exam. Nothing says I love you more than scrutinizing your partner from scalp to toes!
In all seriousness, Melanoma Updates has also noted back in October that Harvard School of Public Health wanted to encourage more primary care physicians be trained in looking out for melanomas while they happened to be examining other parts of the body. Makes sense to me. So, it makes sense to me that if you’re at all uncomfortable having a full body skin-exam that you could at least start by having your loved one give you a naked eye once-over for spots and dots you can’t see yourself. As the Skin Cancer Foundation’s post points out, “patients themselves detect about half of all melanomas.” They also have a terrific self-exam how-to posted on their site.
As they also note, it doesn’t replace a doctor’s examination, especially one trained in the use of a dermatoscope.
image of dermatoscope
But we are all about moving skin cancer prevention forward, and keeping loved ones around for as long as possible.
Tags: Dermoscopy, Detection, How-To, Prevention, Skin Cancer, Skin Cancer Foundation