What is the evidence that skin cancer clinic checks are useful?

What is the evidence that skin cancer clinic checks are useful?

  • Post last modified:September 11, 2016
  • Reading time:1 mins read

The incidence of skin cancer is increasing worldwide. For decades, opportunistic melanoma screening has been carried out to respond to this burden. In 2003, the Association of Dermatological Prevention was contracted to implement the population-based SCREEN project in Germany.  360,288 participated in this study. A total of 3103 malignant skin tumors were found. Five years after SCREEN a substantial decrease in melanoma mortality was seen.  The project showed that  systematic skin cancer screening reduces deaths from skin cancer .  This study is quite impressive given that the melanoma is much more common in Queensland than Germany.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22074699