STORY BYAt age 29, Suzanna Vaught-Martin decided it was time to roll up her sleeves and be more vigilant about monitoring suspicious-looking moles that cover her arms and other parts of her body.
She already was doing routine spot checks and having atypical moles removed. However, with the hundreds of moles that grace her fair skin and her significant family history of basal and squamous cell carcinomas, Vaught-Martin felt that wasn’t enough.
Dr. Adelaide Hebert, professor and vice chairman of dermatology at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, says when multiple atypical moles are involved, it can be a daunting task for both patient and doctor to detect subtle changes.
Vaught-Martin watches computer
screen that displays images of her
moles taken by Dr. Hebert.
Photo by Meredith Raine
MoleMax II, one of only three digital imaging systems in Texas, located at UT Medical School at Houston, helps to document more accurately those suspicious moles and skin lesions. The machine’s microscope is housed in a trigger-like device that Hebert points directly at a mole or skin spot. It illuminates the mole, magnifies the image 30 times, takes a picture, maps the position of the mole on the patient’s body, and then saves the image to a computer disk.
The disk can be used for yearly comparisons to see whether the mole is growing or changing. Patients can give the disk to their regular physician to use as a baseline for comparison or return to the UT-Houston dermatology clinic annually for follow-up examinations.
“When people have a lot of moles, it’s impossible for their doctor to really remember where every mole is and whether it has changed,” Hebert says. MoleMax can display side-by-side comparisons of the moles on a split computer screen, eliminating doubt, or having to rely on chart notes or patient observation.
“With the MoleMax, you literally measure the size of the mole with the computer, so you know categorically whether it’s bigger or smaller,” she says.
The magnification provides greater clarity of the features of the mole, and in some cases, can eliminate the need for a biopsy.
MoleMax ‘s image of patient’s arm.
Photo by Meredith Raine
“We can visualize the mole more accurately,” Hebert said. “It can prevent us from removing moles that are normal but may look atypical to the naked eye or hand-held magnification.” Hebert recommends the mole-mapping procedure to patients who have moles on areas of their body that they can’t easily monitor, a family history of skin cancer or multiple, atypical moles.
The mapping is painless and takes about an hour for each 50 moles that are charted. Ultimately, UT-Houston’s mole mapping technology can save lives, Hebert says. The death rate from melanoma has risen about two percent annually since 1960, and the American Cancer Society estimates there will be 47,700 new cases of melanoma in the United States this year. Early detection is the key to curing almost all skin cancers, Hebert says, yet an estimated 7,700 with die.
Vaught-Martin says MoleMax II also provides peace of mind. “People usually don’t think about their risk of skin cancer until they are in their 50s, and that may be too late,” she said. “It’s important to start a routine of identifying moles and the changes they go through early on. Having technology that helps you keep a close eye on those changes is great.
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Dr. Adelaide Hebert is a professor in the Department of Dermatology at the UT Medical School.
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What a Difference
60 Minutes Can Make
It’s just an hour. At 2 a.m. on March 14, time changes as we “spring forward” one hour overnight. It wouldn’t seem to be that big of a deal, but it is according to researchers at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sleep Science. They have found that in the days immediately following the spring time change each year more people have serious car accidents, most likely due to the sleep loss and adjustments that our biological clocks must make to the new schedule.
To prepare for the time change, start going to bed and waking up 15 minutes earlier each day between now and the start of Daylight Savings Time. This helps reset your biological clock.
The spring time change isn’t the only time we should be concerned about our levels of sleep. According to the sleep researchers, adults ought to get 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep every night, but few of us do. This does more than leave us groggy in the mornings. Findings have shown that a lack of sleep may increase risks of obesity, diabetes, stroke and heart attacks.
The National Sleep Foundation offers this advice for healthy sleep:
