A new study reveals no significant damage in melanoma screenings by primary care providers

A new study reveals no significant damage in melanoma screenings by primary care providers -

A new study of more than 1,000 primary care melanoma projections in the region western Pennsylvania in 2014 suggests that all the practice conforms to the old medical maxim "first do no harm." The figures show that the projections do not give rise to a peak in the surgical treatment or specialist referrals.

Malignant melanoma kills about 10,000 people in the United States each year, but the condition can be cured if caught early. This has led some experts to call for widespread training of primary care providers to make projections during routine visits. Other experts expressed concern, however, that the practice could lead to an endemic overtreatment and unnecessary distress of the patient if, for example, primary benign error care providers for serious cancers. These competing concerns are among the things considered the US Prevention Services Task Force is preparing new cancer screening recommendations of the skin.

In this context, a team of researchers from several centers run by Dr. Martin Weinstock, professor of dermatology in the School of Medicine Warren Alpert from Brown University and chief of dermatology at Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center, decided to study what happened when a group of primary care providers in the system of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center won the online training in the detection of melanoma and began searching for the skin cancer in 2014.

training was used the online course available INFORMED that Weinstock and his colleagues developed in 2010.

screening study skin

to perform the analysis, the team Weinstock examined data from tens of thousands of encounters with patients 35 and older in both the first eight months of 2013 ( took place before the training) and 2014 (after the training has taken place). The researchers also divided the caregivers in three comparison groups - one in which about a quarter of providers were trained, one in which only 1 in 11 of the providers were trained, and where none were form. The design of the study allowed the team to compare several results both in time and between groups with different levels of training.

The researchers found that neither the dermatologist visits or skin surgeries increased significantly between 2013 and 2014 in one of the groups. Between groups there was also little difference in the frequency of these results occurred.

The lack of major change was not because the training had no effect, says Weinstock, who also leadas melanoma program in the Lifespan health system. Between 2013 ad 2014, the group of suppliers with the most training produced an increase of 79 percent of melanoma patient diagnostics. The other groups with little or no training showed no significant increase in diagnoses.

The reason why the diagnoses have increased significantly in the most qualified group but the dermatologist visits or surgeries do not have it is because the number of diagnoses were tiny (24 out of 11 238 patients in 2013 and 48 out of 12,560 patients in 2014). In the same group, within two years, numbered skin surgeries in the hundreds and dermatologist visits numbered in the thousands. There are many reasons why so many of those who might happen regardless of melanoma.

In other words, patients with newly diagnosed melanoma may well have received the proper care monitoring their diagnoses guaranteed without radically changing the total number of visits or surgeries dermatologist. But meanwhile, Weinstock and his colleagues wrote, there was no sign that the training of primary care providers to screen for melanoma flooded dermatologists or surgeons with case torrents.

"The first elements of this screening effort indicates that the detection of melanoma associated with a ADVISED training program changed or results in a large number of surgeries of the skin, or a dramatic increase in the number of visits dermatologists, who are two consequences potential negative downstream that were of concern as a potential basis of disease, distress and costs, "the authors wrote in Cancer .

in a follow-up study, Weinstock said the team plans to analyze the detection measures results in significantly greater distress for patients. It will be a not only to know test whether screening in primary care has this unexpected result, but also whether the INFORMS during manages to training providers not only for cancers of the place, but also reassure patients when lesions are benign.