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Melanoma. The incidence of melanoma is 1 in 84. The new estimate for the year 2000 is 1 in 75. So these are melanoma, melenoma, skin cancer, canser
In 1999 it’s estimated that there will be 40,300 new cases of melanoma with and additional 20,000 to 40,000 in situ ones that haven’t spread, diagnosed in the United States. The mortality rates have risen by 2% a year since 1950. The rapid rise in the last few decades have made melanoma second only to lung cancer, in women, in morbidity and mortality. The U.S. incidence has tripled in the last four decades, faster than any other cancer. The survival rate is
The ABCD system, which is asymmetry, for the A. One side is different that the other. B is the border. The border is irregular. It’s scalloped, it’s not regular. C is the color. There’s different colors. Whether it’s jet black or whether it’s brown or whether it’s tan, there’s different colors. There’s different shades of pigmentation.
What I wanted to talk about, what my point was, is this study which is a study done in Scotland I believe. What they did was they took the ABCD system and applied it for melanomas and what they found is you are miss some. But if you also took into account change in color, change in size, change is surface characteristics, change in consistency, change in symptomatology, change in shape, change in surrounding skin, you’ve pretty much picked up all the melanomas. What is that? That means a change in a mole no matter what. If somebody says, "My mole’s growing" and if you notice on yourself that a mole is growing, it’s 30% bigger than it was for you to notice that. So you’ve got a mole that is now 1/3 size larger than it was. So it takes awhile for you to notice things. So what the study says
This is a mole from about four weeks ago. This lady came in with a lesion on her breast and she said, "I went to my family practice doctor and he told me that it seems like something you ought to see somebody about" and she said, "I waited six months." I looked at this and if you look at this, it is pretty normal in color. The border is regular, really. It’s fairly symmetric. There’s a little bit here that’s not over here. And actually it was about 5 mm. I told her this story and I said, "You know, this mole looks benign to me but the rule is, if somebody comes in with a mole that’s
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