New Study Shows Increasing Burden of Melanoma in the United States

dermRounds (NEW YORK) -- Linos, et al, has demonstrated that there may be an increasing burden of melanoma in the US. Dermatologists in this study state that it may be controversial that the melanoma incidence represents a true epidemic. As a result, to better understand how melanoma incidence trends varied by severity at diagnosis and factors relevant to screening access, this group assessed recent United States incidence and mortality trends by histologic type, tumor thickness, and area-level socioeconomic status (SES). In this investigation, they obtained population-based data regarding diagnoses of invasive melanoma among non-Hispanic whites from nearly 291 million person-years of observation by the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program (1992-2004). They go on to conclude that screening-associated diagnosis of thinner melanomas cannot explain the increasing rates of thicker melanomas among low SES populations with poorer access to screening.

Source: PubMed