Screening for skin cancer in bank and insurance employees: risk profile and correlation of self and physician's assessment.

Abstract

Self-assessment and knowledge of individual risk factors can be a reasonable strategy to detect cutaneous malignancies in an early curable stage. Bank and insurance employees were voluntarily screened for skin cancer. They had to fill in a questionnaire asking for their skin and hair color, ultraviolet exposure and tanning ability, number and size of typical and atypical nevi, immunosuppression or chemotherapy, and history of skin cancer. Afterwards dermatologists performed a whole body evaluation, including a total body nevi count, and calculated an individualized risk profile. A total of 1658 employees were evaluated. Most employees underestimated their total number of nevi. There was poor agreement between employees and dermatologists (weighted κ-value=0.03); 45.5% of the employees were judged to be at low risk, 27.3% as intermediate risk, and 27.2% as high risk. Twenty-seven employees (3.7%) with suspicious lesions were transferred to the clinics for further evaluation. Screening for skin cancer in a working population reveals low numbers of suspicious lesions. The focus of mass screenings should be on education and teaching of self-examinations.