Doctors caution on risks of skin cancer during summer

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

Climate change comes to mind as May is Skin Cancer Awareness Month. While only one of five oncologists and dermatologists has directly connected the two, four have also stated that incidences of the disease, characterised by the abnormal growth of skin cells, have been on the rise since five years back.

All interviewees claimed that skin cancer is curable, especially when nipped in the bud. Four have cited successful stories - 100 per cent cured - from their respective records.

Medcare Medical Centre (City Centre Mirdiff. Dubai) Dermatology specialist Dr. Nancy Labib, citing studies said: “For every one per cent decrease in ozone is a two per cent increase in the UVB irradiance and therefore a two per cent increase in skin cancer is predicted. UV (ultraviolet) radiation, a physical pollutant is thought to be the factor responsible for most skin cancers in humans. Exposure to UV radiation from the sun plays a major role in the development of skin cancer.”

UVB are the “invisible sun rays that cause sunburn, darkening and thickening of the outer layer of the skin, melanoma and other forms of skin cancer,” according to the US Department of Health and Human Services-National Institutes of Health-National Cancer Institute.

“Skin cancer represents one of the most common male malignancies in the UAE. The prevalence rate is 14.5 per cent. There is an increasing incidence of skin cancer around the world and in the region,” said Saudi German Hospitals (Sharjah and Ajman) Oncology consultant Dr. Samer Akel. He had a 65-year-old patient able to overcome Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC - a small and white or flesh-coloured lump on sun-exposed body parts) by surgery, discovered due to a “bleeding skin lesion after shaving.”

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Doctors caution on risks of skin cancer during summer

Prime Medical Centre (Al Nahda, Sharjah) Dermatology specialist Dr. Mona Aly in the last five years of her 15-year-career, has recorded “increased risk of skin cancer, noting that the “huge number” of her patients since 2018, are of various ethnicities across all ages including children.

Two of her elderly patients, a man and a woman, also found to be suffering from BCC were completely healed “surgically.” So was the 20-year-old man diagnosed with Hypo-Pigmented Mycosis Fungoids (a malignant skin tumour common among the dark-skinned and the young).

Canadian Specialist Hospital (Dubai)-Dermatology Department head Dr. Akbar Ali also has BCC as the most prevalent among his files with “Types One to Four of more frequency among Middle Easterners and Types One to Three among Westerners.” The rare Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma (which also comes in various forms and traceable to the white blood cells and therefore not only affects the capability of the germ-fighting immune system but worse, attacks the skin), is detected most often among other Asians.

He recounted how a long-time UAE resident from India went to him after having experienced five years of itchiness all over his body, with “many doctors” saying he was stricken with Psoriasis (flaky and scaly patches of skin). A consequent biopsy disclosed it was not Psoriasis but T-Cell Lymphoma, specifically Mycosis Fungoids which “improved completely after starting treatment.”

“There has been a steady rise in the incidence of skin cancer in the UAE. This could be because (the country) is located in a geographical location which has an annual average sunshine levels and sun exposure is a well-known risk factor for the development of skin cancer worldwide,” said Thumbay University Hospital (Ajman) Dermatology specialist Dr. C. Vijay Krishna.

Like the rest of the interviewees, majority of Krishna’s patients in the past five years, are adult males, mostly exposed under the sun because of their work or profession: “Although I had seen a few in their late 40s and 50s as well. They are businessmen to traders, engineers and even captains, like in the ship and aeroplanes.”

Krishna repeated what Labib, Akel, Aly, and Ali had shared with Gulf Today: “One of the most common factor in them was their sun exposure.”

Labib who claimed has not seen “an increase” in cases in the last three to five years “due to increased level of awareness over the last five years,” shared the success story of her BCC-afflicted 46-year-old engineer-cousin in 2018: “He was exposed under the sun without any protection. I noticed a lesion on his right upper lip one day which he did not know was dangerous. He is now totally fine with his BCC first stage removed completely during biopsy.”

All the doctors said healthy lifestyle and sun protection help keep skin cancer away as other pollutants may also cause it.