AN UNEXPECTED headline caught the eye this week: “Mole clinics to open in high-street pharmacies.” We’re used to cholesterol and eye tests in chemists, but cancer tests are a new development.

Superdrug has linked up with a screening business called The Mole Clinic to offer one-to-one consultations for concerned customers. Nurse specialists use digital video equipment to identify moles that show early signs of skin cancer. It costs £45 for one mole; £15 for each additional mole examined. Is it worth it, or is this just another service pandering to the worried well? Male rates of melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, have quadrupled and female rates trebled in the past 25 years, and there are 8,000 new cases and 1,200 deaths a year. The incidence of melanoma is greater in women but mortality is greater in men. This is thought to be because women visit the doctor if they notice changes in their moles, while men tend to ignore them.

In some ways, this is rather unfair. Melanomas in women tend to be on more accessible areas such as legs, whereas men’s are more likely to be on their backs. How do they get to see them without posing naked in a large mirror regularly? What men really need is an eagle-eyed woman who can go through the recommended seven-point checklist. This includes changes in size, pigmentation or an irregular border, all of which are big prompts to seek urgent medical advice, plus itching, inflammation, oozing or a mole that’s larger than others. The good news is that the five-year survival rate for melanomas diagnosed at an early stage is 95 per cent. Later stages, however, have a dismal prognosis. Raising awareness in Australia has put the melanoma death rate at 1 in 8; ours is 1 in 4.

The Superdrug clinics are to be applauded for raising the profile of this potential killer. But your GP can give you a moles once-over for free. Why go anywhere else? One reason is that The Mole Clinic tests seem to be more thorough, and are overseen by qualified dermatologists. Another is that people curiously see the value of services they pay for more than those they get free. And it’s hard to argue with the fact that among the 7,000 people who have attended The Mole Clinic’s main site, 100 melanomas have already been detected.

Given that melanomas are most common in younger people of working age, the group that finds it most difficult to get time off to see the GP for symptoms that they may consider trivial, perhaps we should be applauding this development.

www.moleclinic.co.uk

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