CHICAGO – The true extent of the burden imposed by nonmelanoma skin cancer remains widely underappreciated by health policy makers, the public, employers, and nondermatologist physicians, Marta J. Van Beek, MD, asserted at the annual meeting of the American College of Mohs Surgery.
It’s very much in the interest of Mohs surgeons, as the experts in cutaneous malignancies, to get the accurate message out, she added.
Bruce Jancin/MDedge News
Dr. Marta J. Van Beek
Abundant evidence indicates there is an ongoing epidemic of nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) in the United States – and it is associated with a surprising amount of morbidity and mortality, the dermatologic surgeon observed.
For example, while the American Academy of Dermatology’s 93-page Burden of Skin Disease report identified melanoma as the No. 1 cause of mortality because of skin disease – no surprise there – what may come as news to many is that NMSC was No. 2, accounting for 4,376 deaths in 2013, or 19% of the total. That’s more deaths than occurred because of wounds and burns.
And while the number of cases of NMSC is going up year after year as the population ages, it’s also the case that patients with complex NMSC are developing it at a younger and younger age. As documented in the AAD’s DataDerm registry encompassing more than 6 million patients seen by dermatologists during 2015-2017, well over 20,000 patients who underwent Mohs micrographic surgery for NMSC were aged 45-55 years, and another 60,000 were aged 55-65 years. That being said, Mohs surgery was used to treat 477,365 NMSCs in 318,933 patients included in DataDerm during 2015-2017, and in that population, basal cell carcinomas outnumbered squamous cell carcinomas 2:1.
An interesting aspect of the burden imparted by NMSC is that patients with NMSC have a higher risk of other types of cancer, and when they develop those other primary cancers they tend to do more poorly than cancer patients without a history of NMSC, Dr. Van Beek continued.