Published on July 22, 2024
Healthy Tips Video: Dr. Tidwell Discusses the Skin Cancer ABCs
Video Transcript
Most of us, if you're like me, you have a number of different pigmented moles on your skin. And I thought I'd go through the ABCs of moles and those characteristics of skin lesions that would cause us to perform a biopsy just to make sure that they weren't a skin cancer.
So like all of medicine, we have acronyms, and we use the ABCs to help us remember those characteristics of moles that would indicate that they should be biopsied. So, A stands for asymmetry. If a mole has a really weird shape that is not symmetric, either a circular or oval, that is an indication that maybe it should be biopsied.
The B stands for border. Benign moles should have a distinct border that you can tell where it starts and where it ends. If you have a mole that seems to be pigmented and then just fades into the normal pigmented skin, that's maybe an indication.
C stands for color. For the most part, moles should be homogeneous, have the same coloring throughout. If a mole has deep dark spots and lighter spots, different colors within it, that's maybe a characteristic that should indicate that it should be biopsied.
The D stands for diameter. Most of us have several moles on our bodies, and it just doesn't make sense to biopsy every pigmented thing that we have on our skin. But a mole that has a diameter greater than 1 centimeter, that 1 centimeter is the threshold at which we say, well, let's biopsy that mole and make sure that nothing's going on there.
But hopefully those A, B, C and D characteristics are something that either puts you at ease over a mole that you may have or lets you know that, hey, this is something that I should see my doctor about getting biopsied to make sure that it's not a skin cancer.
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