Squamous cell skin cancer needs more rigorous study, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Skin cancers run the gamut from relatively benign basal cell carcinoma to invasive melanoma. In between are squamous cell carcinomas, which are increasing in frequency and likely result in death more often than melanomas do, a new paper asserts, calling for a framework to advance study on this type of skin cancer. While supportive, William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says new technologies may supplant this need.

 Nelson: I suspect that that's going to be progressively revolutionized by imaging tactics that are increasingly being brought forth by dermatologists and device manufacturers that will be able to look at your whole skin, use image analysis, artificial intelligence aided I'm sure, to look at lesions that are more suspicious and then you can have them removed when they're small and not so aggressive. And that would go for all of them. I think that's ultimately going to be where we're going to make the greatest advances.  :28

Nelson anticipates availability of such technology in the next couple of years. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.