The Halloween season provides plenty of spooky images, but perhaps nothing is quite as scary as the facts about Skin Cancer. These three statistics may strike a bit of fear in your heart.
- Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States.
- Over the past three decades, more people have had skin cancer than all other cancers combined.
- One in five Americans will develop skin cancer in the course of a lifetime.
Life is busy. We all have commitments that dominate our time, and a skin check just feels like one more thing to add to the list. Is it really worth the interruption to the scheduling chaos?
Patients often are torn between desiring a quick appointment and wanting to make sure that I am thorough. How long should a complete skin examination really take anyway?
One of my mentors used to say that it takes him 90 seconds. That sounded pretty fast, so I did some research and found out that the time required to complete a full body skin exam has actually been studied. In 8 different melanoma clinics around the world, dermatologists were timed doing over 1500 exams. When doing a head to toe uninterrupted exam, it took just over a minute. When dermoscopy was added (a special type of skin microscopy that I routinely use), the time doubled.
So I started trying to keep track of the time it takes me. Given that the whole exam takes just a few minutes, I also decided to see how much extra time it takes to include the scalp.
About 3 minutes. It really does just take about 3 minutes to do the exam. You don’t have to be a speed demon either, my pace was still rather leisurely.
It still seems like a short amount of time, but this is what years of training and experience gives you. A good dermatologist ought to be able to do this in just a few minutes. Even in my own world of medicine, if you came to me to have your annual physical done, I would take twice as long and still be not as good as my neighbors in the building who practice family medicine because as a specialist I focus on the skin whereas they listen to heart and lungs and palpate the liver and spleen on many patients each day. So I can do a much better skin exam than they can, and it will take me a fraction of the time it will take him.
But 3 minutes of focused time to look at your skin is all I need to find a cancer that could potentially kill you.
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Miller Family Dermatology is a Dermatology practice focused on medical and surgical dermatology. Dr. Arlo Miller and his staff primarily help people with skin cancer, melanoma, skin checks, acne, psoriasis, eczema, rashes.
It really is a family operation. Arlo, his wife Johanna, and their two young daughters live right here in Issaquah. Johanna, a registered nurse, is a part of the clinic, and her mother is the office manager. The practice provides skin care for your entire family - accommodating to both young and old alike.
You can connect with Miller Family Dermatology online at www.millerfamilydermatology.com and via Facebook at www.facebook.com/MillerFamilyDerm.
Miller Family Dermatology is a local sponsor (and subscriber) of Macaroni Kid.
