Hauppauge Doctor Offers Free Cancer Screenings for Melanoma Awareness Month

This weather feels like the perfect time to get a tan, but with skin cancer on the rise, one should think twice before baking in the sun.  

In honor of skin cancer/melanoma awareness month, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Hauppauge offered free skin cancer screenings to locals Thursday.

With red hair and freckles being two of the risk factors linked to the illness, this writer decided it was time for her first screening. However, she was a few years late to the process. In fact, someone with risk factors should start skin screening in their teens, Dr. Ashfaq Marghoob, who conducted the screening, said. Early screenings help to get a baseline for any future changes.

According to Marghoob, incidents of skin cancer in the United States are rising faster than any other cancer diagnosis. The good news though is that most forms of skin cancer are not deadly if found early. Early detection is the key, Marghoob said. If the cancer is found at its beginning stages, most people can be cured with a simple surgical procedure.  

How do you catch it early? Know your own body, the doctor said, stating that people should examine their skin once a month to look for any changes.  

“To catch it early you should be aware of your own skin - looking for anything that is different on the skin. Find the outlier or the ugly duckling lesion. Look for any change in size, shape, color or symptoms,” he said.  

Most melanomas are not found by physicians, but by patients themselves, who know the signs, he said.  

“I think the message is taking charge of your own health, looking at your skin and knowing you have the power to find these things early,” he said.  

The other factor to avoiding skin cancer is through prevention.  

“Don’t purposely go out and bake in the sun,” he said. Marghoob suggested wearing a broad-spectrum sunblock with SPF of 30 or higher that blocks both UVA and UVB rays and is ideally water resistant.  

While more people are aware of skin cancer today than in the past, the death rate has mostly remained stagnant. One person every hour is dying of melanoma that has spread, Marghoob explained.  

“Despite the message being given, efforts toward prevention have not yet born any fruit,” he said.  

However, one can take control of their body if they understand the signs. Realizing those signs can be as simple as knowing your ABC’s.  

When doing a self-exam, keep the letters ABCDE in mind when looking at a mole or dark spot: A for asymmetry, B for border irregularity, C for color, D for diameter (melanomas are usually greater than 6mm, about the size of a pencil eraser) and E for evolution, or change in the color, shape or size of a mole.   

Those more at risk for skin cancer include those with fair skin, freckles, red hair, a history of excessive sun exposure, family or personal history of either melanoma or skin cancer, 50 or more moles, atypical moles, easy burning and older men. It is recommended that anyone with those risk factors get a screening once a year.   Those at risk for skin cancer should start early, as well.

People without those risk factors should pay attention to any changes on their skin and take advantage of having a screening when the opportunity arises, such a visit to a dermatologist for any other issue.  

A screening is a quick process in which a doctor looks over one's skin for any abnormalities. In this writer's screening, Marghoob took a closer look at a few freckles with a microscope and is happy to report that everything looked clear.

Unfortunately, that was not the case for all of Marghoob's patients that day.the doctor had screened 15 patients at the Hauppauge facility by the early afternoon when he had already given his first melanoma diagnosis of the day.