Diagnostic and referral accuracy of family doctors in melanoma screening: effect of a short formal training

Little is known about ability of family doctors in the diagnosis and management (decision as to dermatologic referral) of pigmented skin lesions. We sought to evaluate the impact of a short formal training on diagnostic and referral accuracy of family doctors in melanoma screening. A formal 4-h training session was given to a sample of 41 practising family doctors working in the Florence health district, Tuscany, Italy. Before and after the course, a diagnostic test with a series of clinical images of pigmented skin lesions including four invasive melanomas (mean thickness, 1.5 mm; range, 0.8-2.2) was performed (open intervention study). Although only 46.8% of observations yielded a correct melanoma diagnosis at baseline, 96.1% of melanoma observations were correctly associated with intention to refer the lesion to dermatologist. After training, the percentage of correct melanoma diagnosis significantly increased (76.2%, P=0.01) while no further improvement was found as to sensitivity of referral (94.8%, P=0.58). Compared to baseline, post-training evaluation showed a significant reduction of benign lesions sent to dermatologist: the percentage lowered from 52.1 to 35.8% (P=0.0014) for melanocytic nevi and from 38.6 to 17.5% (P