Dermoscopy of Malenoma

What is malignant melanoma?
Malignant melanoma is a serious skin cancer that starts in melanocytes. It is also known as cutaneous melanoma. This skin cancer is much dangerous due to its rapidly spread to other organs if it is not controlled at an early stage.
Melanoma can appear in anywhere on the skin, but for people with lighter skin, melanoma is more likely to start on the chest and back in men and on the legs in women. The arms, face and neck are other common areas both in men and women. People with darker skin have a lower risk of developing melanoma in these more common areas. Melanoma even can happen in the eyes, while it is rarely to form inside body, like in throat or nose.

What is the cause of melanoma?
The cause of all melanomas is not exactly clear. But melanomas risk increase with exposure to ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet light, also known as UV, comes from sun or solariums. UV radiation can damage the DNA in skin cells, causing mutations that cause the cells to grow uncontrollably and form cancerous tumors.
Melanoma commonly happens especially in tanning, and sunburn during childhood. So it is helpful to reduce the risk of malignant melanoma by limiting the exposure to UV light.

Common high risk groups
The common high risk groups include: a previous melanoma comes back, a history of the sunburns, a family history of melanoma, fair skin or red hair, having many moles or atypical moles, a weakened immune system and so on.
The risk of melanoma appears to be increasing for people under 40, especially women. It is important to understand the high incidence of melanoma in people to help to prevent it. If people find a suspected person, then he should seek medical attention as soon as possible. Melanoma can be successfully treated when it is caught in early stage.

Symptoms of melanoma
There are some common signs and symptoms of melanoma including the following characteristics:
Asymmetry: one half of a mole or birthmark does not match the other half.
Size: Melanomas feature in larger size than normal moles, often exceeding 6mm in diameter.
Color: Melanomas may display different or multiple colors or shades, like brown,black,pink,red,blue, white even mixed color.
Border: melanoma may has irregular, scalloped, notched, or blurred borders.
Pain: Some melanomas may be painful or tender to the touch. Sometimes the spot will bleed and ooze fluid.

The appearance of new and atypical spots on the skin is the most important warning sign of melanoma. And other important warning sign is the existing spots have changed in color, size and shape. However, there may be one or two unusual characteristics of melanoma. Atypical changes on skin should be pay more attention to.

Survival rates for malignant melanoma
If diagnosed and treated early, malignant melanoma has a high cure rate, and the five-year survival rate for localized melanoma is about 98%. It includes the stage 0, stage I and stage II of malignant melanoma.

If it is not founded in the early stage, and it reaches to stage III of regional melanoma , the survival rate of malignant melanoma is about 63%.

However, if malignant melanoma is not treated until it has reached a more advanced stage and has spread to other parts of the body, such as the liver, lungs or brain is more serious and challenging to treat and has a lower survival rates.The five-year survival rate for stage IV melanoma is about 22%.

No matter how, use a dermoscopy to detect the atypical spots is necessary in case of any chance for evolution of malignant melanoma. Under the dermoscopy, dermatologists can detect and diagnose malignant melanoma much easily and accurately.

Identify the characteristics of malignant melanoma by using dermoscopy
Under the dermoscopy, it is clearly to display the features of malignant melanoma. Such as, by using dermoscopy, malignant melanoma usually clearly shows Irregular edges or borders and multiple colors. And malignant melanoma commonly appears in abnormal pigment distribution and structure, or atypical vascular distribution. Special signs such as granular areas and small blue and white papules may occur. Dermoscopy can precisely distinguish the points of malignant melanoma from benign lesions such as nevus.

Dermoscopy in the diagnosis of malignant melanoma
Dermoscopy is a dependable and aiding medical technique by skin doctors to detect the melanoma. Dermoscopy combines a powerful lighting system and high quality magnify lens to enhance the view of deeper skin and some hard-to-reach locations by naked eyes. The whole process of skin examination under dermoscopy without any side effective or adverse reactions. Dermoscopy can assist professional doctors to make early diagnosis of malignant melanoma without unnecessary biopsies and surgeries. Dermoscopy helps skin doctors to determine the clinical stage of the mass. What’s more, during the whole process of detection or treatment, as a monitor, dermoscopy can observe the progression of lesions. Dermoscopy greatly helps skin doctors to evaluate the effectiveness of surgery or other treatment of malignant melanoma.

Dermoscopy in public self-examination
Dermoscopy is usually designed to a small electric device which is convenient to handheld or easy to take photo by compatible with phones and tablets. Dermoscopy gains a very popularity both in hospital and in home. Dermoscopy can easily identify the malignant melanoma in professional hands. There are some main points when people use dermoscopy in public self-examination.

Firstly, correct operation and usage is necessary.
Secondly, during the use of dermoscopy, it needs to keep precautions and observations.
Thirdly, as soon as suspicious lesions are detected by dermoscopy, then it needs to seek medical treatment promptly.
Fourthly, people should cooperate with professional doctors for diagnosis and treatment after self-examination by dermoscopy if any atypical lesions founded.

Skin health is very significant to every one. Detection of malignant melanoma is really important, especially there being negligence in its early stage. With the help of dermoscopy, it increases much more confidence for dermatologists to diagnose and treat malignant melanoma and other skin diseases. In addition, more and more people use dermoscopy to examine skin conditions. Especially, high risk groups of malignant melanoma should even more often use dermoscopy for regular self-examination.