Dermoscopy in the Southern Hemisphere: a success story

When Harald Kittler asked me to write an editorial on der-moscopy (to be precise, he used the linguistically correct term dermatoscopy) for Dermatology Practical & Conceptual, the journal founded by Bernie Ackerman and now under his edi-torship, I must admit I accepted his invitation with an element of uneasiness. Perhaps because I recall that Bernie never really embraced dermoscopy and not simply because of the linguistic misnomer [1]. As much as he was fascinated by the clinicopathologic correlation of inflammatory skin diseases, and to a lesser extent also of melanocytic proliferations, he seemed to ignore the equally fascinating universe of dermo-scopic-pathologic correlation. In any case, all of my work in this arena in the last two decades was, and is, heavily influenced by Bernie's dogma of the significance of clinicopatho-logic correlation. Therefore, I see this editorial is an excellent opportunity to pay respect to Bernie as a mentor and a teacher and to cite the book of Bernie's that I have enjoyed reading most, namely, The Lives of Lesions [2]. In short, dermoscopic-pathologic correlation of melanocytic prolif-erations and study of the lives of naevi (and sometimes, by chance, melanomas) dermoscopically is based on his seminal work and influenced by his unique morphologic approach. And in this context I am very pleased indeed to write this editorial. Given my current location in Australia, Brisbane, the capital of Queensland to be precise, I wish to focus this editorial on dermoscopy Down Under, and I specifically draw attention to the following relevant points: i) Dermoscopy is frequently adopted by a large proportion of Australian dermatologists for detailed lesion examination. A nationwide dermoscopy survey investigating the prevalence, advantages and disadvantages of dermoscopy use among Australian dermatologists gave evidence that a total of 98% of dermatologists (99 of the 283 [35%] dermatologists completed the survey eligibly) reported using dermos-copy, 95% of which had received formal training. Further, 85% found it improved diagnosis compared to naked eye examination; and 57% of dermatologists used baseline der-moscopy to follow up changes in lesions over time [4]. ii) Within Australia, dermoscopy appears to be commonly utilised in the wider medical community, particularly in the non-dermatologist skin cancer medicine community (although no robust data are available), and an agenda for quality health outcomes has been recently proposed, including training and education in dermoscopy [3] to further improve this service that is in high demand. This agenda has been undertaken by …