Routine haircut proves lifesaver thanks to stylist
It was a routine hair appointment, but for Emma Saunders it turned into a potential lifesaver.
The Nelson woman was getting her hair washed when Zinc hair salon owner Andrea Ranieri noticed an irregular mole on her scalp.
He thought the oval-shaped mole looked big, and advised Saunders to have it checked out.
It was advice the hairdresser has given to more than a dozen clients. Saunders was one of three who were found to have potentially deadly melanomas.
She said her dermatologist told her the mole did not have any of the usual suspicious skin cancer characteristics of being itchy, raised, bumpy or reddened. But its size, about 6mm in diameter, raised questions.
‘‘He monitored it and the size close to doubled in six months,’’ she said. ‘‘That was a concern, something is going on for it to grow so quickly.’’
Saunders said they decided to take the mole out because of its changing size and because it was in a difficult spot to self-monitor near the back of her head.
Test results showed the mole was a melanoma in-situ, meaning it was contained at that point and had not got into her blood stream.
But to be safe, Saunders needed more skin taken away around the mole site. ‘‘They like to take quite a reasonable margin [of skin out] to make sure there’s no rogue cells slightly further out.’’
The surgeon was ‘‘amazing’’, she said. ‘‘I had 30 staples in my head and 12 stitches, but I barely lost any hair. There’s nothing negative about the experience, getting it removed is not fun but it’s fine, it had to happen.’’
Saunders said the time frame of melanoma in-situ becoming invasive was hard to predict.
Just over a year later, she felt lucky the mole was spotted early.
‘‘I feel grateful. Grateful it was found, grateful that people measured it and took it seriously and grateful that’s it’s out.’’
Ranieri said this year alone he had told five people to go get a mole checked. All were been removed after being investigated.
‘‘I was asking myself, is it just me in this industry that would come across these things?’’
He realised he was not the only one when he visited an online hairdressers’ forum where others were sharing similar stories of finding suspicious moles.
‘‘We want to raise awareness for other hairdressers to look out for these things.
‘‘We put a lot of effort into raising awareness of putting sunscreen on the face, but we don’t think about the head a lot.’’
Saunders said she had her moles checked by a dermatologist every year and checked them herself between appointments.
‘‘They don’t routinely go through your hair because when your hair is dry it’s so hard to see. It would be easier if people went to have their moles checked with wet hair.’’
Harley Street Medical doctor Graham Loveridge said it was great idea if hairdressers looked out for suspicious moles.
‘‘Hairdressers working so closely with the heads of their clients, for them to have a bit of a awareness is a really good public health strategy.
‘‘I get a handful of patients every year because their hairdressers noticed something on their scalp.’’
Loveridge said it was better to be safe than sorry, especially since New Zealand had a high rate of melanoma and other skin cancers.
A full mole check included looking at the person’s scalp, but hair ‘‘tends to obscure a lot of it’’.
‘‘Hairdressers have a great opportunity to spot things.’’
For more information on skin cancer and what it may look like, visit dermnetnz.org.