Can your hairdresser detect cancer?

Hairdressers and barbers are great at doing your hair but did you know they are also great at finding skin cancer on your scalp?  Many people examine their skin and find suspicious moles and other skin spots that could be cancerous.  But identifying cancer on the scalp can be limiting.  It is hard to see your scalp unless you look in the mirror and even that is difficult.  This might be why scalp melanomas have a worse prognosis than those that are found on other parts of the body.  It might be a while before you see skin cancer on your scalp. Melanoma has high cure rates when diagnosed early, but poor survival when found at an advanced stage.

Hairdressers and barbers, however, are good at looking at your scalp because they are staring down at your head.  Hairdressers and barbers can be trained to detect cancer on your scalp.  The Cancer Institute at Advent Health Daytona Beach is directing an effort to train hairdressers to spot potentially cancerous moles and lesions on the scalp. The training involving a 20-minute video and a quiz. It’s easy for just about anyone to learn how to spot cancer. A video developed by www.EyesonCancer.org also includes descriptions of melanoma and other types of skin cancer, including basal and squamous cell skin cancer. Finding melanoma early, before it spreads to other parts of the body, is a critical part of effective treatment. When a person finds melanoma in its first stage, they have a 98 percent chance of surviving for five years.