At the scanoma medical team, we use visual analysis, enhanced with various contrast methods, through which we obtain a more detailed impression of the main aspects of a skin lesion. This method is very reliable if the examining physician has sufficient experience. That is why scanoma cooperates only with such doctors, who have decades of experience and a cautious attitude. The reliability of this methods depends on the type of skin lesion and experience of the analyzing physician. In case we’re not very sure about a diagnosis we recommend further tests, following a “better safe than sorry policy”.
Dermatoscopy (also called "reflected light microscopy" and dermoscopy) is a non-invasive and painless examination procedure in dermatology that is used in particular for the early detection of malignant tumors of the skin. In this procedure, the skin is examined down to all its deeper layers with a microscope using polarized light, reflected light or a digital technology. Even without a biopsy, this method can determine with about 80% certainty whether a lesion is benign or malignant.
To diagnose dermatological lesions, a biopsy is sometimes required. In particular, if non-invasive methods cannot determine with sufficient certainty what the condition really is. In a test biopsy, the doctor takes a small piece of skin to be sent to a pathologist for diagnosis. This procedure is virtually painless, takes barely 5 minutes, and is extremely safe. It’s reliability can be as high as 90%.
In contrast to a test biopsy, in an excision biopsy the physician completely removes the affected tissue in the case of a suspicious finding. In order to spare the patient a possible re-excision, the operation is performed with a safety margin ("in sano") of usually 3 to 5 millimeters. The gain in knowledge is greater with this type of biopsy, since the skin area in question is removed together with the surrounding tissue (muscles, nerves, blood vessels and connective tissue). A pathologist then examines this removed tissue so thoroughly that the diagnostic accuracy is almost 100%. Most excision biopsies take little more than 10 to 15 minutes and are completely painless thanks to a small local anesthetic injection. There is no reason to fear an excisional biopsy.
A new algorithm proved in clinical trials to be at least as reliable as dermatoscopy. On average, the results are even significantly more reliable than time-consuming dermatoscopy. Scanoma was granted the exclusive right of (first) use for this algorithm.
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