“It takes years to change people’s practice patterns.“
Folks, doctors cannot possibly have the current information they need. They have jobs and lives and can’t read all the new research. As this study author proves, even “10 years” later, cancer specialists STILL DON’T KNOW the right thing to do, now. These are specialists who do this work daily, are well-intentioned, yet are clueless.
You need to go into visits with your doctors and specialists armed with a modicum of knowledge. It is for your benefit, your family’s, and that doctor and his or her future patients.
As the victim of an "excisional" melanoma biopsy for an usual but completely benign lichenoid keratosis, it is unbelievable how much tissue they carve out of you for anything that even remotely resembles a melanoma.
This happened 25 years ago, and I am still angry about it.
At the time, I lived just a few blocks from the dermatology clinic of a major university.
They called a clinical conference after I was examined by a resident with less than a month of experience. Every dermo MD and pathologist in the Department came in for a look-see.
They literally talked each other into a state of hysteria. One of the young MDs present was the future president of the American Dermatology Association!
Adjusted for inflation, the entire fiasco cost me almost $5,000.
Exactly a year later, while browsing periodicals at my local library, I glanced at the cover of the New England Journal of Medicine and saw a photograph of the same kind of lesion I had. Apparently, these lesions were being misidentified all over the USA.