Skin Cancer Diagnostics Dermoscopy Masterclass Manchester 30th August 2024

I am glad to be able to announce, on behalf of Skin Cancer Symposiums, an International Dermoscopy Masterclass to be delivered by 4 highly regarded world researchers and teachers. The Masterclass is an advanced level refresher and update and comes right after an accredited 2 day dermatoscopy symposium on the previous two days 28 and 29 August at the same venue. It will be a brilliant refresher and update for dermatologists, dermatology trainees, GPs with a special interest, specialist skin cancer nurses and other clinicians whose work regularly involves evaluating skin lesions. The Masterclass will also be suitable for beginners who have attended the previous 2 day symposium, especially if they put in some pre-course study.

The 2 day skin cancer diagnostics symposium held over 28th and 29th August at the same venue is designed to give a good grasp of the use of the dermatoscope (hand held skin microscope) for diagnosing skin lesions. It is aimed at beginners and improvers with the dermatoscope but will also be of great value to the more experienced. The main symposium teachers are Professor Cliff Rosendahl and Professor Amanda Oakley. These are two incredible people, who have made huge contributions to the benefit of dermatology patients both in their home countries and world wide.

I owe Cliff a personal debt as he gave me generous hospitality and taught me a new level of skin lesion diagnostics in his Brisbane clinic when I visited Australia on a sabbatical 5 years ago. I first heard of his global reputation at a Primary Care Dermatology Society Dermatoscopy Masterclass in Manchester in 2016, where Professor Harald Kittler was teaching. In a discussion about the clothing fabric sign, he mentioned that it had first been described by Cliff, whom Harald praised as an ‘ordinary’ GP who was an example to us all as he had done, and published, great research from his own GP surgery in Brisbane. (I have been in that surgery, it’s a modest one story building in the suburbs of Capalaba, a small town just outside Brisbane).

Cliff earned a full professorship by research on skin cancer diagnostics he did in that little clinic, driven by his passionate interest in melanoma hunting after his brother in law died from metastatic melanoma that was originally misdiagnosed by a GP. They never blamed the GP, he didn’t know any better and did his best, but Cliff devoted the rest of his career to make sure that as many GPs and others as possible WOULD know better, and this is the driving imperative behind Skin Cancer Symposiums, and is why he has taught all over the world, including Iran, Turkiye, Ukraine, Britain and elsewhere. He is a brilliant teacher, I have adapted my own teaching a lot based on what I learned from him.

The name of Amanda Oakley from Waikato, New Zealand, is also highly regarded, for it was she who established the acknowledged number one global dermatology web learning portal, www.dermnetnz.com. Among several other distinctions she has earned, Amanda was made Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the late Queen’s 2018 birthday honours for services to medicine, and rightly so-the Dermnetz web site is acknowledged by everyone who knows anything about dermatology as by far as the most user friendly, reliable and comprehensive learning portal for doctors, nurses and patients. I and thousands of others use it daily. Amanda will be teaching about the evolution of melanoma, a subject she has especially researched, and the development of teledermatoscopy in New Zealand as part of an extended session on this vital subject.

Joining the team on the 30th with be Professor Bengu Nisa Akay from Ankara, Turkiye, and Dr Ausama Atwan from Newport, South Wales. Nisa is a highly regarded researcher and brilliant teacher, who was on excellent form when I saw her presenting to a room of over 1,000 dermatologists at the EADV in Berlin a few weeks ago. I asked her to present with the team in Manchester on some of her strongest areas, namely the dermatoscopy of pigmented skin lesions in darker skin types, childhood skin tumours and facial pigmented lesions. her images are brilliantly well focused and show a range of appearances that is most instructive. If you are a health care professional working in skin lesion recognition, especially if a number of your patients have Mediterranean skin types, you really don’t want to miss this.

Dr Ausama Atwan is a clinical lecturer at the University of Cardiff and has published on a highly effective teledermatoscopy scheme that he and colleagues worked out of Newport hospital in South Wales. It has been such a success that the Welsh NHS has asked him to assist in rolling the system out across the whole of Wales. In designing the programme, I have emphasised the developing technique of teledermatoscopy (which we are starting to roll out at the Hampshire hospital where I work) because it is a proven solution to the problem of high and rising levels of demand for suspicious and potentially dangerous skin tumours to be professionally evaluated. Cliff, Amanda and Ausama will each be presenting on different aspects of using modern technology to diagnose potentially deadly melanomas earlier while screening out harmless lesions more efficiently. This is just something what we HAVE to do, and these are three people who have done it and written it up, all working in different health care setting, so there will be a lot to gain if you are hoping to modernise and improve your skin lesion diagnostics systems to cope with increasing demands and expectations.

Ausama is a UK board member of the International Dermoscopy Society.

Finally, I will be presenting on the many faces of basal cell cancer dermatoscopy from my 20 year archive of images, considering the varied appearances of BCCs of all shapes, sizes, histopathological sub types and bodily locations. The programme is as below, although it’s just possible there might be some changes but this is what we are going to the printers with!

Dr Stephen Hayes at the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology annual congress, Berlin, October 2023. Stephen is the author of this blog, an e-book ‘Skin Cancer Diagnosis Made Easy’ a skin lesion diagnostics educator and board member (UK and Europe) of the International Dermoscopy Society, and writes a regular column for the Primary Care Dermatology Society bulletin.

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Programme: Skin Cancer Diagnostics Masterclass 30^th August 2024 Manchester

09.00 Introduction and housekeeping

09.10 Hunting BIG game: diagnosing difficult and dangerous skin tumours – including amelanotic melanomas. Professor Cliff Rosendahl, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

10.00 Childhood skin tumours including melanoma. Professor Bengu Nisa Akay, Ankara, Türkiye

10.30 The many faces of basal cell carcinoma Dr Stephen Hayes Hampshire, England

11.00 refreshment break

11.20 Diagnosing pigmented facial lesions Bengu Nisa Akay

11.40 The evolution of melanoma. Professor Amanda Oakley, Waikato, New Zealand

12.00 challenging and instructive cases with electronic voting.

12.45 Lunch

13.45 Teledermatoscopy in New Zealand: then, now and in the futureProfessor Amanda Oakley

14.10 How we made teledermatoscopy work in South Wales. Dr Ausama Atwan, Newport, Wales.

14.40 Deploying photographic technology to detect featureless melanomas. Cliff Rosendahl

15.00 Making teledermatoscopy work-forum discussion

15.10 refreshment break

15.30 Dermatoscopy of lesions in pigmented skin Bengu Nisa Akay

16.20 Dermatoscopy of actinic keratosis, Bowens and SCC Dr Ausama Atwan

16.00 A case study of familial melanoma Cliff Rosendahl

16.40 Any questions? Panel discussion forum

17.00 Finish

I will post more about the symposium and Masterclass later. I earnestly commend it to all clinicians whose work involves skin lesion recognition. With melanoma and other skin cancers killing more Britons annually than road traffic accidents, cancer of the cervix and meningitis put together, and the NHS dermatology service under unprecedented pressure, can you afford not to? See you in Manchester.