Seemal Desai, MD, Responds to Study Suggesting Melanoma is Overdiagnosed in White Patients
Source: Dermatology Time, April 2024
Desai emphasized that most dermatologists would rather biopsy a potential melanoma than miss one that could become deadly.
In January 2024, a study published in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine stated that melanoma overdiagnosis among white Americans is significant and gradually increasing over time. Adamson et al used data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results 9 registries database and DevCan software to calculate the cumulative lifetime risk of being diagnosed with melanoma between 1975 and 2018.
In their study, Adamson et al found that between 1975 and 2018 the adjusted lifetime risk of being diagnosed with melanoma (invasive and in situ) increased from 3.2% (1 in 31) to 6.4% (1 in 16) among white men, and from 1.6% (1 in 63) to 4.5% (1 in 22) among white women. Adamson et al wrote that among patients diagnosed with melanomas in situ, 89.4% of white men and 85.4% of white women were likely overdiagnosed in 2018.