elocal returned to the Cutting Edge Plastic Surgery building at 11-13 Roulston Street to talk about skin checks as summer approaches.
e This must be your busiest time of year?
Things do get busy as the Summer approaches. Shirts come off, bits of skin that have been covered up all winter start to see the light of day and changing moles get noticed. We’ve already been busy with patients who are thinking about beach bodies too. They’ve been thinking ahead so they’ve had their operations so they’re all healed and ready for the summer.
e When should people come for a skin check?
If there’s something on your skin that has obviously changed, then it needs to be looked at. It’s much better to catch a skin cancer early. There are certain factors in a person’s past that make them more prone to skin cancer and those people should certainly be having skin a check once a year.
If you had 5 sunburns that left you simply peeling, not even bad enough to blister, before the age of 16, your lifelong risk of melanoma doubles – and of course, your risk of the other common skin cancers, like basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma.
e Who should do the skin check?
Ideally it should be a nurse or a doctor with some extra training to use a dermatoscope. My specialist training is as a plastic surgeon, but I also did a year-long postgraduate course in dermatoscopy and gained a distinction in my final exam and I’m now a Fellow of the Skin Cancer Institute. All the nurses who work with me are training and qualifying as dermatoscopists in their own right but every dermatoscopic image of a mole or skin blemish in my practice is checked by me as well. There are lots of places that offer skin checks, but it may pay you to be sure they have some extra training and expertise.
e So expertise is what matters?
Expertise is critical, but also efficiency and economy. Most people find they can’t claim skin checks on their health insurance, so we try and give value for money. What often happens is that people go for a Molemap (which is an excellent brand run by very expert dermatologists) or something similar, but what that gives them is a dermatoscopic assessment and a report; but what if that report suggests some of their moles need further specialist assessment and possibly surgery? What then? Then they must organize all that as well - so add the time and trouble and the price of a GP appointment and a referral to a dermatology or surgery specialist to the cost of their initial assessment. Even if they have health insurance for the specialist appointments, those initial steps are unlikely to be reimbursed.
That’s where we believe we offer not just an expert service, but efficient and economic one too because we’re a “one stop skin cancer shop”. As well as the expertise and state-of-the-art diagnostic technology, we cost much the same as mole-mapping elsewhere, but we offer a dermatoscopic assessment and a surgical opinion without the time delay and expense of receiving a report, then having to book further appointments to see a GP and then another specialist. Sometimes our service involves two visits (which is still less than the alternative) but it’s still much faster and great value.
e Why two visits sometimes?.
When you come for an appointment for a SkiNZurance check at Cutting Edge you will have a total body photography session that yields a 30 picture benchmark for us to compare against in future skin checks. That way we can see changes happening, but in the same session any suspicious skin lesions will be checked with a dermatoscope by a trained nurse dermatoscopist or by me. Whoever assesses you, I see all the pictures and if I have any concerns, a second appointment is made for me to assess you at no extra cost and either way, I write and inform you and your GP of my findings. If I recommend surgery, it is entirely up to you where you chose to have your surgery and with whom, but again, we’re set up to treat you locally and efficiently if that’s what you need.
e We’d all better give our skin some serious thought this summer.
Well, we also offer gift vouchers. Nothing says “I love you” at Christmas quite as meaningfully as a SkiNZure assessment gift voucher! They’re valid for a year, but better not to wait that long before you have a skin check.