Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Increasing rates of skin cancer in Korean patients

I'm Korean. My last name (Kim) gives it away. An interesting paper caught my eye the other day. It was titled, "Recent trend in the incidence of premalignant and malignant skin lesions in Korea between 1991 and 2006."

They noted an increase in both premalignant and malignant skin lesions in Korean patients.  For cutaneous malignancy, the incidence was 0.25% during 1991-1998 and 0.34% in 1999-2006. Those are still very small numbers, but the increase is significant. I spent a lot of time in the sun when I was a teenager, so I need to keep an eye on my skin. It's a good thing I'm married to a doctor. 

Kim HS, Cho EA, Bae JM, Yu DS, Oh ST, Kang H, Park CJ, Lee JD, Lee JY, Kim SY, Kim HO, Park YM. Department of Dermatology, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea. Recent trend in the incidence of premalignant and malignant skin lesions in Korea between 1991 and 2006. J Korean Med Sci. 2010 Jun;25(6):924-9. Epub 2010 May 24.
Click here to read the article

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