Melanoma rates in the US steadily increasing
Researchers are saying that more and more Americans are being diagnosed with melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer. Since 2009, the rates of the deadliest form of skin cancer have steadily increased despite warnings to stay out of the sun, use sunscreen and avoid tanning beds.
“The current lifetime risk of an American developing invasive melanoma is 1 in 54 compared with 1 in 58 when we last reported in 2009,” a team of skin experts wrote.
According to Dr. Alex Glazer of the National Society for Cutaneous Medicine and his colleagues, more than 76,000 Americans would have been diagnosed with melanoma in 2016. More than 10,000 would have died from it, up from 8,500 in 2009, according to the American Cancer Society.
The incidence of melanoma has grown from 22.2 cases per 100,000 people to 23.6 cases per 100,000 people, they said.
“The overall burden of disease for melanoma is increasing and rising rates are not simply artifact owing to increased detection of indolent disease,” they wrote.
That’s still slower growth than in past decades. There was a 200% jump in deadly melanoma cases between 1973 and 2014. The American Cancer Society said that the rates of melanoma have been rising for the last 30 years.
Glazer and colleagues pointed to other studies that suggest more people are being diagnosed with melanoma because doctors are looking harder for it and getting better at detecting it.But they also noted that the mortality rate is rising faster than the detection rate, which suggests it’s not being caught earlier.
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