Cancer Spotters!

They make us look fabulous by cutting, coloring and styling our hair, but hair stylists and barbers could also serve on the front lines of detecting skin cancers on the scalp, neck and face, a new study suggests.

Researchers surveyed more than 200 stylists and barbers from 17 Houston-area salons and found that while few of them had formal training in detecting cancer, more than half of them already had found a cancerous mole or lesion on customers. They also expressed interest in learning more about how to better detect cancers on their customers’ scalps, faces and necks.

Alan C. Geller, a senior study author says researchers conducted the survey because 10 percent of fatal melanoma is found was on the scalp. They were concerned about the gap between who was diagnosed with melanoma and who died from it, and wanted to see if there was a need for more training among hair dressers. Their findings are released today in the Archives of Dermatology.

“The scalp is not a place that people can easily look at on their own, and we don’t think a lot of physicians are looking for melanoma on the scalp,” says Geller, a senior lecturer at the Harvard University School of Public Health. “Most people make 10 visits or more a year to see their hair dressers and barbers and they tend to look more carefully for mold and legions on the scalp."