Mini Course: Dermatoscopy and Melanomas

Our team is hugely passionate about skin cancer and, in particular, the importance of the early diagnosis of melanoma. New Zealand currently sits as an outlier on the world stage when it comes to both melanoma incidence and melanoma death rate, this is unacceptable.

There are many facets to this problem, including timely diagnosis, access to the best treatment and the high levels of UV exposure for those living in our beautiful Aotearoa. Our goal is to facilitate the timely diagnosis of melanoma and reduce the number of unnecessary excisions of benign lesions. For this reason, we have created a free online guide to teach how dermatoscopy can facilitate the diagnosis of melanoma.

Professor Cliff Rosendahl is recognised as a world leader in dermatoscopy and one of the best teachers in this field. Diagnosing melanoma does not require a medical degree; it simply requires good widespread education and awareness.

Skin cancer diagnosis requires taking a history and all the other aspects of clinical acumen, but primarily it is a skill of visual pattern recognition. With this in mind, we have created this mini-course to facilitate the basic understanding of the visual "red flags" of diagnosing melanoma.

In all of the cases presented, we include clinical and dermatoscopic images. In some, the diagnosis will be evident in the clinical image and reviewing the dermatoscopic image will further reinforce this. In some examples, the diagnosis is only evident in the dermatoscopic image.