I am able to offer my patients dermoscopic photographic images, for diagnosis and monitoring of head and neck skin cancer. If your skin cancer surgeon or dermatologist is not offering this then you need to ask them why not. It is the gold standard for skin cancer diagnosis and recommended by NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) standards on management of skin cancer.
I have refreshed my dermoscopy skills recently having obtained my Certificate in Introduction to Dermoscopy. This is the respected course from Cardiff University. The benefit of dermoscopy is to improve the diagnosis of skin cancer and speed up time to treatment. If not a cancer then prevent the need to treat when the lesion is benign.
In my dermoscopic examination of suspected skin cancer patients I am able to more accurately make a diagnosis skin cancer and more confidently move to complete treatment, avoiding in some cases a diagnostic biopsy first. Conversely I can avoid treatment of otherwise benign lesions, reassure patients and continue to monitor the lesions by keeping an electronic dermoscopic image of the lesion of time. These images you keep after I email them to you and prove useful in the future. This can be used and compared by the next health professional that you see.
