Poster Presentation Skin Cancer 2024

Skin screening and the rate of future incidence of skin cancer (#184)

Nirmala Pandeya 1 2 , Catherine M Olsen 1 2 , Rachel E Neale 1 2 , David C Whiteman 1 2
  1. Department of Population Health, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
  2. Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Increased levels of  skin screening are suspected of driving recent increases in melanoma incidence through increased levels of diagnostic activity, however population level data to support this contention are lacking. We used linked data from Australia’s universal health insurance scheme to follow a prospective cohort of 10,674,200 men and women from 2011-2016. We defined participants as surveilled (having a confirmed keratinocyte cancer), screened (skin procedure but no confirmed skin cancer), or unscreened based on medical claims related to skin procedures occurring in 2013, among those with no such claims in the previous two years (2011-12). We compared the rates of biopsies, excisions for suspected melanoma, and excisions for histologically confirmed melanoma during follow-up (2014-2016). After adjusting for age, sex, and socio-demographic factors, we observed screened people were 2-4 fold more likely than unscreened people during follow-up to be diagnosed with confirmed melanoma. We observed similarly elevated rates of subsequent diagnostic events for the surveilled group. Our finding suggests people undergoing skin screening subsequently experience higher rates of diagnostic procedures and skin cancer outcomes irrespective of their skin cancer risk profile.