Healthwatch: Finding skin cancer with new device
By: Tara Joyce
Updated: January 18, 2013
(WFRV)--Skin cancer accounts for 80% of all new cancers in the U.S. It's preventable and if caught early, it's curable. Now doctors' have a new way to find it before it's too late. Cleveland Clinic has named one of its top medical innovations of 2013.
Soaking up some rays can be fun, or fatal.
Doctor Mark Nestor says catching skin cancer early is key.
"When it's caught early, it's virtually 100% curable; when it's caught late, it will kill you," Mark S. Nestor, M.D., Ph.D., Voluntary Associate Professor in the Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Surgery at the University Of Miami Leonard Miller School Of Medicine tells Ivanhoe.
Detecting melanoma can be tricky. While some cancerous moles can be easy to spot, many others that are just starting to become dangerous are not.
"What we wanna do primarily is never miss anything," says Dr. Nestor.
But now a new FDA approved tool is giving doctors the upper hand.
Dr. Nestor explains that, "The idea here is to have the tools necessary to be able to tell whether or not we should biopsy a legion."
MelaFind uses a scanner that emits ten unique wavelengths of light to analyze the various aspects of the mole. In just a minute it displays a 3-D image of the mole and rates its disorganization as high or low.
"This is the first type of computerized diagnostic aid in this realm that has ever been approved by the FDA," says Dr. Nestor.
In studies, MelaFind was 98% accurate in predicting melanoma and reduced unnecessary biopsies by 90%.
Dr. Nestor says, "We are determining visually in a much better way."
MelaFind is being used in a few hundred sites across the country. Each session costs 150 to 200 dollars and it's not covered by insurance.
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