Dermatology Crash Course #23: Melanoma

Okay, so starting off with talking about melanoma, what exactly is melanoma and why is it such an important diagnosis for all clinicians to recognize early?

Well, melanoma is the kind of skin disease that patients can die of.

So everyone is afraid of missing a melanoma, no matter how many years you've been in practice.

Melanoma is a cancer of the pigment-producing cell, the melanocyte.

And although it's not that common a cancer, it is one of the most virulent cancers that we grow in our skin.

And it has variable appearance.

It can sometimes be without any pigment at all.

And so...

It's something that we all need to learn to be able to recognize.

It is the major cause of skin cancer death.

Interestingly, more people die of squamous cell a year, but there are many more squamous cells.

There are almost 2 million, up to about 1.8 million squamous cells a year.

And so about 15,000 people die of squamous cell.

But there are only, for the next year, going to be about 112,000 melanomas diagnosed in the United States.

And over 8,000 patients are anticipated to die of the disease.

So it has a high mortality rate associated with it, particularly if not diagnosed early.

Okay.