Original articlePatients with both basal and squamous cell carcinomas are at a lower risk of further basal cell carcinomas than patients with only a basal cell carcinoma
Section snippets
Patients
A total of 1180 unrelated English Caucasians were recruited from the dermatology outpatient clinics at our university hospital between 1991 and 1998 with local ethics committee approval and informed consent from all participants. The BCC only group comprised 1040 patients. These were patients with one or more histologically proven BCCs on presentation. The BCC/SCC group comprised 140 patients with both histologically confirmed BCC and SCC. Patients in both groups were recruited at the time of
Characteristics of patients with BCC only versus BCC/SCC
Table I shows the characteristics of the study group. We used logistic regression analysis to show that the proportion of male and female patients was not significantly different in the two groups. The proportion of patients with skin type I was greater in the BCC/SCC (18.8%) than BCC (10.7%) group although the difference was not statistically significant. Data on skin type were not available on all patients. A t test showed that the BCC/SCC group presented later with their initial BCC (t test,
Discussion
Patients with BCC or SCC are at increased risk of other cancers.7, 8 Frisch et al,8 in one of the largest population-based cohort studies, looked at the risks of subsequent malignancies after the diagnosis of either BCC or SCC in 37,674 and 5100 patients, respectively, within the Danish cancer registry. In addition to confirming that both patients with BCC and SCC were at increased risk of developing nonmelanoma skin cancer and melanoma they also demonstrated a higher risk of other cancers (eg,
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Supported in part by a grant from the Cancer Research Campaign.
Conflicts of interest: None declared.