Use of skin photographs improves patients’ abilities to detect changes in nevi requiring physician evaluation
Patients who use photographs of their own
skin for reference have a greater ability to detect changes in nevi
and other skin lesions than patients who do not use photographs,
according to an article in the January issue of The Archives of
Dermatology.
In the current study, American investigators
explored whether access to photographs of their skin and atypical
nevi would affect patients’ abilities to detect new or changed nevi
during skin self-examination.
A total of 50 patients aged 18 years or older,
each of whom had 5 or more atypical nevi, had digital photographs
taken of their backs, chest and abdomen (where moles were present)
and conducted skin self-examinations during visits to a major cancer
clinic. Patients were given copies of their baseline photographs.
Next, researchers changed the appearance of existing nevi and created
apparently new ones with use of cosmetic eyeliner pencil in a color
that closely matched the color of the real nevi. The new and altered
nevi totaled approximately 10 percent of each patient's total mole
count.
The researchers found that patients who used
their digital photographs as part of skin self-examination had an
improvement of more than 10 percent in the ability to correctly
identify new or changed nevi compared with patients who did not
have photographs available (72.4 percent and 60.2 percent, respectively).
"Access to baseline photography improved
the diagnostic accuracy of skin self-examination on the back and
chest or abdomen and improved detection of changing and new moles,"
the researchers wrote. "Our results suggest that baseline digital
photography in tandem with skin self-examination may be effective
in improving the diagnostic accuracy of patients performing skin
self-examination."
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