Need Your Advice -- Nevi, Growths

Dr. Rockoff:

I'm a 39 yr old caucasian male with dysplastic nevi and one in situ melanoma (back) diagnosed this year--Stage I, re-excised along with lymph node removal. No complications, all very neat and tidy. On track with 3 mo. checkups & mole mapping. Here's my concern: now that my dermatologist's threshold for suspicious moles has lowered, she is scaring the daylights out of me because it seems to me that she now sees melanomas all over my back. Guess I should be thankful for the vigilance ... Now she's concerned about one on my waist/buttocks. It's a fairly flat, pencil eraser-sized red growth that I thought was a "carbuncle," or boil, and which appeared earlier this year. Going in to have it and two nevi removed this week.

Doc, here are my two questions: first, since I have a history, how many more melanomas could I get? And would that history make me more prone to a nodular melanoma, which is what worries me about the waist/buttocks growth. Thanks for helping a very agitated patient.

-- Mountbttn  

[Alan Rockoff, MD]

having one melanoma does raise the chances of your getting another.  However, that doesn't mean the risk is all that high.  What you need to do is what you're doing: get regular checks and biopsies when needed.  I suspect that as time passes, your dermatologist will find the need to do fewer biopsies, and your anxiety level will diminish too.

Take care.

Dr. Rockoff