The best way to check your skin is to perform a skin self-exam. Which you can do at home. You need a room where you can undress and have access to a full-length mirror and a handheld mirror. It also is helpful to use a body mole map to track changes on your skin.
A skin self-exam means you will need to look at all your skin. Moles can appear anywhere on your skin – the scalp, between fingers, on a toe or sole of the foot. You can even get a mole under your nail.
As you examine your skin, you will look at each individual mole. As you look at a mole, you want to look for the following signs, which you can remember as the ABCDEs.
- Is one-half of a mole, unlike the other half?
- Does a mole have an irregular, scalloped, or poorly defined border?
- Do you see more than one color in a mole, such as shades of tan and brown, black, white, red, or blue?
- Do you have a mole that is bigger than 6mm (the size of a pencil eraser)? Melanomas are usually bigger than 6mm when diagnosed, but they can be smaller.
- Do you have a mole or other spot on your skin that looks different from the rest? Have you noticed that a mole or other spot is changing in size, shape, or color?