Sometimes its hard to differentiate between things that are actually going on, and what is just blown up because of the fact that the media chooses to pay heed to it. Some say that skin cancer falls into that category.
ABC News had an article this week about this issue entitled “Is There Really a Skin Cancer Epidemic?”. This article talks about the debate of whether the increase in cases of skin cancer is just about a change in the way that doctors are diagnosing the disease.
It’s a fact that you can not dispute that over the last two decades the number of melanoma cases has doubled, and continues to rise each and every year. This is a fact that the media, as well as anti-skin cancer campaigns have latched onto as proof of just how dire the situation is. The question however is just what the contributing factors are to this increase? Some people doubt whether or not there are actually any more cases of melanoma than in the past.
“The main message is to be cautious about overstating messages about a melanoma epidemic to the public and media,” study co-author Dr. Nick J. Levell from Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, Norwich, UK, told Reuters Health in an email. “Such behavior will tend to induce unnecessary anxiety and behavior that may cause distress and harm.”
Dr. Levell and colleagues had a hunch that some of the “epidemic” was due to the fact that many cases of a skin condition known as benign melanocytic nevi – a type of mole – were now being diagnosed as malignant melanoma.
So they did a study to look at this issue. They examined the diagnoses of melanoma from 1991-2004 in the East Angilla region of the United Kingdom. What they discovered was that the rate did in fact grow. From 9.39 cases per 100,000 up to 13.91 cases per 100,000. However, the difference was almost entirely made up of early stage cases, the later stage diagnoses remained constant. At the same time the rates of death increased from 2.16 to 2.54, but pretty much everyone with an early stage case survived.
From the studies conclusions they determined that many of the cases that were now being diagnosed as melanoma, would have been diagnosed as benign melanocytic nevi in the past.
“The trend is to some degree a product of society’s trend toward increasing litigation and physicians’ increasing fear of making a mistake,” Dr. Levell added. “Neither of these is likely to be reversed. Recognition of the phenomenon does however enable the public and physicians to compensate for it to some extent.”
The findings of this study will be published in the September 2009 issue of the British Journal of Dermatology. If you believe their conclusions, then the rate of melanoma has been pretty much constant.
That doesn’t mean that there’s no need to take precautions. All it means is that people are just as likely to contract melanoma now as they were 20 years ago. This tells me that we still have a lot of work to do. I would think that the number should be decreasing due to all the information and protective measures we have these days. Sadly, that’s not the case. Until we get headed in the right direction I say go ahead media and spin the facts any which way you want. We need to increase awareness.
Leave a comment