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Gulf News explores mole mapping as a means of preventing skin cancer
Transcript
00:00So I'm here today at the Derma Skin Care Centre in Dubai, basically for mole mapping.
00:12So what they're going to do, as you can see, I'm covered in them, I have lots of them.
00:16They're going to take digital photography of the moles all over my body, feed them into
00:20a computer to check for irregularities and any changes.
00:25Nobody should underrate the importance of mole scanning or mole mapping in Australia.
00:29There are maybe 500 clinics of mole scanning and those clinics have radically reduced the
00:34rate of death in Australia over 15 years.
00:37So these are very important points to be noticed, early diagnosis, early detection, early check-up.
00:43I believe anything which looks different to you and new to you, either in the form of
00:48change of the pre-existing lesions on your body or the spots on your body, or something
00:55which is new, and if it doesn't disappear over a given period of time, no, in a given
01:01period of time I would say a couple of weeks, not months.
01:04If it's an ordinary inflammatory rash, it should disappear, or with some creams or emollients
01:11or moisturiser.
01:12If it's not disappearing, please see a dermatologist.
01:16We are in the mole mapping room now and what's going to happen, the doctor's going to come
01:20in and he's going to select the moles on my body that he wants to scan and then they
01:26will scan them into this machine here and take readings and we'll see whether there
01:32are any that he doesn't like or whether they're all okay.
01:35So hopefully, fingers crossed, they will all be okay.
01:39Number one advantage is that it gives us 25-30% more findings about the character of the moles
01:47because we take a penetrating digital image of the mole which gives us a magnified outlook
01:54of the mole and we can see inside colour distribution and granule distribution, grey-blue areas
02:01or vascular pattern under the mole, there are a few things which can find as a danger
02:06signs if they are positive or they are negative, which are not seen from the surface.
02:12So second thing is to record a baseline status of the moles at this stage and then comparing
02:18in the future for any change.
02:20So computer is very sensitive, it picks any even minute change in the character of the
02:25mole.
02:26Then we have to determine whether that change which has been picked by the computer is significant
02:33enough to be challenged for removal or we ignore it till the next examination.
02:38So this is the aim of this exercise.
02:41So now it has given the score 0.3, it is a borderline suspicious which is not fully
02:50diagnosed melanoma but not regular mole itself.
02:54Once we do 30-40-50 moles on you, maybe different moles can give us different picture and we
03:02might find something little more suspicious than this and we try to act as a proactive
03:09strategy of management.
03:11So I don't leave the suspicious moles left unattended.
03:15So my approach is that you must go and just get them off.
03:19So rather than allowing them to go to melanoma stage.
03:24Now prevention, again we said early diagnosis, early diagnosis is based on your routine checks
03:31and it doesn't really take longer, it's just 15-20 minutes and one visit a year and it's
03:37only couple of hundreds of money you spend on one meal in good hotel and restaurant that
03:44money.
03:45So if you can spend that money to save your life, it's not a bad deal really, it's not
03:50a bad bit.
03:51So my request is please do regular checks.
03:54So from the original malignant melanoma or cancerous mole that I had on my leg which
03:59was a tiny mole that hadn't changed in years, they then had to excise a bigger chunk out
04:04of my thigh, the margin to make sure that they got all the cancer cells in the original
04:09one and basically I will show you the result now and this is what you don't want to end
04:15up with.
04:16As I said, prevention is definitely better than a cure, you have to catch these things
04:20early.
04:21Living here in the UAE, obviously very sunny, very hot climates.
04:25If you're working outdoors in the sun, playing outdoors, taking part in any kind of outdoor
04:31activities, it's really, really important to obviously cover yourself, take precautions,
04:36use the sunscreen, cover up in the dangerous parts of the day and really look after yourself
04:42and if you have any kind of concerns, the best thing to do is head off to your nearest
04:47dermatologist and get yourself checked.