Health experts blame pandemic on drop in melanoma diagnoses

Skin cancer specialists say they are concerned the pandemic has resulted in fewer people being treated after a drop in the number of melanoma diagnoses.

Wayne Jaffe, a consultant at University Hospital of North Midlands, said his team were seeing people with more advanced stages of the disease.

Figures show that diagnoses of the disease fell by almost 30 per cent nationally between April and November 2020.

The British Association of Dermatologists said there was “grave concern” about the number of patients which were potentially missed during the pandemic.

Plastic surgeon Mr Jaffe said “I think people found it difficult to get to the GP, that is true.  So the message was only contact your GP if you really think it’s something serious, because everyone’s struggling with the pandemic.

“So there were sort of mixed messages and people thought ‘well it’s only a mole, I’ll leave it’.  Members of our skin cancer MDT team do think we are seeing an increased number of patients with advanced disease, sometimes inoperable disease.”

Each year, around 2,300 people die from melanoma in the UK, but Cancer Research UK said around 86 per cent of these cases were preventable.

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Posted by Karen Motley, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.

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