The Doctors: Is This Mole Cancerous?
With skin cancer being the most common type of cancer, The Doctors TV show said that they get a lot of questions about separating the good moles from the bad moles.
Dr. Glynis Ablon joined The Drs. to help viewer Sarah figure out if her moles were fine or a cause for concern. Dr. Ablon said that one in 50 Americans will get melanoma. Sarah said that she has had several moles removed already, but wondered if there was a way to check for skin cancer without a biopsy.
MelaFind is a new machine that’s being used to detect skin cancer in moles.
The longer you wait to get it diagnosed, the more likely it’ll spread to different parts of your body. If you don’t find it early, it can be truly deadly. Have you ever dealt with skin cancer? I’ve had several moles removed but luckily they were benign.
The Doctors: MelaFind Machine Checks for Skin Cancer
Dr. Ablon now has a tool that can help her check moles to see if they’re a concern for melanoma. The tool has over 98% sensitivity, so you don’t get a lot of false positives. (This sounds even better than the Dr Oz Mole Detective App.)
The machine, MelaFind, uses actual rocket science–the original technology was used for detecting missiles. The machine takes a picture of your mole and compares it to 10,000 other moles. It measures 2.5 mm into the skin and sees what is abnormal at different wavelengths.
The Doctors: Highly Disorganized Moles Need a Biopsy
Sarah’s mole said that it had low disorganization, which is a good thing. The more disorganized a mole is, the more inappropriately the cells are growing. Dr. Ablon said that if there’s high disorganization in a mole, they will biopsy it and check and see if it has skin cancer.
Would you trust the MelaFind machine? Check out MelaFind at work in the video below.
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