Search
Related Links

 

 

Informative Articles

Are You At Risk Of Contracting Diabetes
It is unbelievable, but today there are at least 20 million people living with diabetes in America and the sad part is that it was possible to prevent and heal pre-diabetes and diabetes type 2 naturally with balanced nutrition, and basic exercise....

Experts?
ACCREDITATION: - Scholastic regimentation from the post WWII period has accelerated to the point that Canada won't let an Olympic figure skating medalist teach or coach young Canadians the errors and damages of the present system. She could earn...

How is GERD treated?
If you are bound to get heartburn or even symptoms of heartburn and acid regurgitation for a while, you should visit your medical doctor. You might wish to visit an internal md, a doctor who specializes in internal medicine, initially and then the...

Medical Hair Restoration
Medical hair restoration in the literal sense includes the hair loss treatment which depends upon the use of medicines. Unusual hair loss both in men and women is caused by the alterations in the androgen metabolism. Androgen is a male hormone which...

My gun is loaded, and I'm ready to pull the trigger!
Have you ever gotten upset about something, and said things (or did things) that you later regret? I have. Sometimes, stress is a trigger that causes us to fire our guns. Our pistols are loaded, and angry words shoot out like bullets. Inocent...

 
How to spot bad mole?

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.

Besides ABCD there could be other signs of dangerous mole:

E - enlargement and elevation over the time

Also worrisome signs include easy bleeding and erythema (redness) around the mole.

Itching and pain in the side of mole make you suspicious as well.

History of melanoma in Family should also raise


suspicions.

Some skin problems look like melanoma, but are actually harmless. Anyway, do not gamble with them. Even experienced physician can not always tell if the lesion is malignant or not. It is better to be safe then sorry and check the troubling changes soon.

Some rare types of melanoma exist. Because even obvious melanomas are not always diagnosed on time, the unusual types becomes much more deadlier. Often doctor sees them too late.

Melanoma under the nails. Melanoma of mucous membranes. (Mouth, nose or guts) Amelanotic melanoma - this one is not even colored.

The treatment will be excision with margins and biopsy, but most important of course is to catch melanoma Know that the treatment depends on the thickness of the tumor and the presence of distant metastasis.

Surgeon or dermatologist cuts off the melanoma. Then, Pathologist (doctor specializing in lab diagnostics) looks the sample under microscope.

He classifies the tumor. The grade of the tumor gives the clue to the chances of your survival.

There are several classifications

Breslow classification measure the penetration of the lesion into skin by millimeters. Know that > 0.75 mm is already dangerous, but > 4 mm is wacking.

What is 4 mm. It is nothing. Right? Take a ruler and check how 1 mm looks and how 4 mm looks.

So this is why it is important to catch melanoma early.

There is also Clarks classification that measures penetration of the melanoma into the skin and other layers.

TNM classification standardizes the grading.

You can not know the grade unless you excise and measure the melanoma penetration under microscope. It is not a do-it-yourself project. Surgeon and pathologist will do it.

The time of evolvement 1-2 years.

The frequency of melanoma is increasing. It might be because of more people get sun damage. Also other reasons may play role.

Treatment of melanoma includes surgical removal, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy.

Keywords: Melanoma, mole, nevus, dermatology, pathology, surgeon

About the Author

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/


 

National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health
Part of the National Institutes of Health, the National Library of Medicine offers access to health information for consumer, patient, and physicians ...
www.nlm.nih.gov
 
Health and Medical Information produced by doctors - MedicineNet.com
Doctor-produced health and medical information written for you to make informed decisions about your health concerns.
www.medicinenet.com
 
Medicine in the Yahoo! Directory
Collection of sites for health professionals, with sections on specific disciplines, organizations, continuing education, conferences, publications, ...
dir.yahoo.com
 
MedlinePlus Health Information from the National Library of Medicine
Health information from the National Library of Medicine. Easy access to Medline and Health topics, medical dictionaries, directories and publications.
medlineplus.gov
 
Medicine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Medicine is a branch of health science and the sector of public life ... The practice of medicine combines both science as the evidence base and art in the ...
en.wikipedia.org
 
Journal Home - Nature Medicine
Nature Medicine has a vacancy for a Locum Assistant Editor for six months. The position involves working in all aspects of the editorial process, ...
www.nature.com
 
The New England Journal of Medicine: Research & Review Articles on ...
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a weekly general medical journal that publishes new medical research findings, review articles, and editorial ...
content.nejm.org
 
eMedicine Clinical Knowledge Base
eMedicine features up-to-date, searchable, peer-reviewed medical journals, online physician reference textbooks, and a full-text article database in 62 ...
www.emedicine.com
 
Open Directory - Health: Medicine
the entire directory, only in Health/Medicine. Top: Health: Medicine (11429). Description · Medical Specialties (4888); Surgery (2265) ...
dmoz.org
 
the www virtual library biosciences medicine
www.ohsu.edu/cliniweb/wwwvl/ - Similar pages
 
Medicine - home
Bimonthly journal covering the latest results in clinical investigation relevant to hospital and office practice.
www.md-journal.com
 
Institute of Medicine
The Institute of Medicine serves as adviser to the nation to improve health.
www.iom.edu
 
ScienceDaily: Health & Medicine News
Medical Research News. Health news on everything from cancer to nutrition. Full-text, images, updated daily.
www.sciencedaily.com
 
Google Directory - Health > Medicine
Search only in Medicine Search the Web. Medicine. Health > Medicine, Go to Directory Home. Categories. Alternative Medicine (6308) Basic Sciences (66) ...
www.google.com
 
the world wide web virtual library biosciences medicine
www.mcb.harvard.edu/biopages/medicine.html - Similar pages
 
PLoS Medicine - A Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Journal
PLoS Medicine is a peer-reviewed, international, open-access journal published ... Every issue of PLoS Medicine contains a selection of readers' responses. ...
medicine.plosjournals.org
 
Medicine On-Line - Medicine Online -The International Medical Journal
Medicine Online - independent and peer reviewed journal published by Priory Medical Journals - priory.com.
www.priory.com
 
Entrez PubMed
PubMed is a service of the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
Stanford University School of Medicine
Home Page of the Stanford University School of Medicine.
med.stanford.edu
 
Medicine OnLine
Meds.com offers medical information and education on cancer (lung cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer, leukemia) and HIV / AIDS for patients, ...
www.meds.com