More public awareness of changing moles needed

5 April 2013

More public awareness of changing moles needed

People need to be more alert to their changing moles and pointing out changes they see in the skin of their friends and loved ones, because at least a third of melanomas are identified by the patient, says a leading US-based New Zealand skin cancer specialist.

David Elder is Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and was recently involved in the development of international guidelines for skin lesion classification. His visit to New Zealand is sponsored by the Genesis Oncology Trust.

“Public awareness is a very important part of diagnosis. People need to be aware of their skin and point out any changes to a doctor. The key thing most people notice with melanoma is a new mole or one changing out of step with other moles – like an ugly duckling.”

Professor Elder was speaking today at Melanoma Summit New Zealand 2013, in Wellington. With the theme ‘Connecting melanoma expertise in New Zealand’, the summit is hosted by MelNet with support from the Health Promotion Agency, Cancer Society of New Zealand and Melanoma Foundation of New Zealand.

He says the melanoma staging system – the process of determining the extent to which a cancer has developed by spreading – is continuously updated through evidence-based studies, and the latest is only four years old.

“Melanoma thickness is the most important staging parameter, and that’s been the case for more than 40 years. Thin melanomas are more easily cured than thick ones.”

Other criteria are ulceration and the presence of dividing cells. “A melanoma that has no dividing cells has a better prognosis than one that has any dividing cells.”

He says within a series of melanomas, pathologists can identify attributes that predict outcomes for large groups of patients.

“In one recent melanoma study, approximately 40 percent of the patients had good prognosis attributes which gave them a 99 percent probability of ten-year survival. Melanomas that haven’t spread to other areas of the body have the best prognosis.”

He says recently there have been remarkable results in treating advanced melanoma with targeted therapies based on molecular genetics – pills designed with knowledge derived from the molecular genetics revolution.

“They work so well that people who are extremely ill can be in complete remission within a day. Unfortunately, the effects at this time are usually not permanent, but even five years ago no one would have believed that you could take pills and make these melanomas go away even for short periods.”

Sponsors of the Melanoma Summit are: Roche Products, Cancer Society of New Zealand, Genesis Oncology Trust, Path Lab, Melanoma Foundation of New Zealand, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Abbott Molecular and New Zealand Dermatological Society.

ENDS

© Scoop Media