A study looking at the skills people need to recognise melanoma skin cancer

The research team found that using pictures on a computer didn’t really help people identify changes that should be checked by a doctor.

This trial recruited 72 people who had not been diagnosed with melanoma skin cancer. They were put into 1 of 3 groups at random. Each group used a different method to help them identify skin changes that should be checked by a doctor.

• Group 1 used their own knowledge
• Group 2 used the ABC method (the research team didn’t include diameter because there was no scale on the test images)
• Group 3 used a set of 42 pictures on the computer which included 21 melanomas and 21 non cancerous (benign) lesions

The research team then showed the people taking part 48 pictures of skin lesions, and they had to say whether they were melanoma or not.

When the research team looked at the results they found that none of the 3 groups identified melanomas very well. The people in group 2 did a little better than group 1, but the difference may have been due to chance (the results were not statistically significant ). The people in group 3 did a bit better again, but overall there was little improvement.

The team felt image training may work better if they had access to more images used in other studies. They think that people find it hard to identify melanomas because they can be so varied, and that some images are more useful than others.

The research team concluded that they couldn’t support the use image training or the ABCD method to help people decide when they need to go to the doctor. But they hope that using different images may help improve the image training method.

We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed ) and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.