Frequency of Malignant Skin Tumors in Relation to Facial Wrinkle Score and Sunlight Exposure

Abstract

Background: There are many risk factors that accentuate wrinkling like age, sex, occupation and smoking. Clinically, there is some sort of relationship between facial wrinkling and skin malignancy in association with sun exposure. Objective: To test the assumption whether skin cancer has relation with skin wrinkling frequency and sunlight exposure or not? Patients & Methods: A case-control study was conducted in Department of Dermatology and Venereology in Baghdad Teaching Hospital in the period from April 2011 through March 2012 on ( 57) patients with various skin tumors, and (79) respondents as a control group. Socio-demographic information, sunlight exposure duration measurement and full dermatological examination were done. Facial wrinkles were examined and measured according to wrinkle score in the group. Scores were simplified into: shallow (I, II), medium (III, IV) and deep wrinkles (V, VI). Results: The frequency of skin tumors were as follow; basal cell carcinoma (45.6%), squamous cell carcinoma (42.1%), and others (12.3%). Outdoor activity was more in patients with tumor, while about one third of control group only had outdoor activity (P<0.01). Shallow wrinkles are more frequent among indoor workers while there is no difference in frequency of medium and deep wrinkles among indoor and outdoor workers. Patients with superficial wrinkles more commonly affected with skin tumors than those with deep wrinkles. Conclusion: The present work had confirmed a negative association between the frequency of wrinkling score and skin tumors. Sunlight exposure had positive association with skin tumors, while outdoor activity may increase frequency of deeper skin wrinkling.