Journal of Cancer Diagnosis
Open Access

Cancer screening and early detection are widely regarded as important public health initiatives for lowering cancer mortality rates. Each year, more than 14 million people worldwide are diagnosed with cancer, with 8.8 million dying from it, accounting for one out of every six deaths. Effective cancer prevention and early detection programmes are predicted to be able to prevent or successfully treat 50–60% of cancers [1]. The most commonly diagnosed cancer is skin cancer, which is also one of the most preventable cancers. In the United States, one out of every five people will acquire skin cancer at some point in their lives. Even melanoma, the most dangerous of the three common skin malignancies (basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), has a 5-year survival rate of 98 percent if detected early. Despite the fact that skin cancer is avoidable, more than 15,000 Americans die from it each year.

Melanoma is the fastest-growing cancer in the United States, accounting for the eighth most prevalent malignancy. Melanoma was more likely to strike one in every 1,500 Americans born in 1935 than one in every 105 people born in 1993. Melanoma occurs most frequently between the ages of 20 and 45, in contrast to no melanoma skin cancer, which typically affects older people [2].

While early identification and treatment of skin cancer can improve patient outcomes, there isn’t enough evidence to support mass screening programs. In addition, physician training influences the ability to detect possibly cancerous tumours. As a result, there is considerable debate about who should be screened, who should perform the screening, and how often screening should be performed, with the exception of very high-risk persons with a history of skin cancer or atypical mole syndrome, for whom periodic screening is universally recommended. A risk assessment of the patient should be part of the screening procedure [3].

Actinic keratosis, also known as solar keratosis, commonly appears on sun-damaged body parts like the face, ears, arms, and hands. They may reveal a person’s cumulative ultraviolet light exposure and, as a result, their risk of developing any sort of skin cancer. Other exposures may potentially be linked to actinic keratosis.

Actinic keratosis is ill-defined and uneven lesions that can range in size from a few millimetres to several centimetres. They have a scaly look and might be macular or popular. Multiple lesions are frequently found in patients. After damage, the lesions might turn yellow, reddish brown, or even dark brown or black. Benign inflammatory illnesses with subsequent reactive keratinocyte atypical, Bowen’s disease (squamous cell carcinoma in situ), discoid lupus erythematous, lichen planus, and superficial basal cell carcinoma are among the differential diagnoses for actinic keratosis [4].

In this study, we have shown that individual risk scores can predict relevant medical outcomes for skin cancer and offer the potential for early detection applications. These scores utilize the long tail behavior of the genetic and non-genetic factors, and potentially enable the identification of asymptomatic individuals with elevated skin cancer risk. We also showed that these powerful risk scores can be simply constructed by combining risk factors in an additive fashion. While we explored more complex models, including potential interaction between risk factors, we did not find them to significantly improve the prediction performance [5].

Our risk models were created using self-reported skin cancer diagnoses, and several studies have shown that self-reporting accuracy in skin malignancies varies widely. Misclassification as a result of selfreported data may result in the establishment of inferior prediction models. We were able to indirectly estimate the rate of misclassification for melanoma by focusing on the genetic variant effect estimates obtained in our study and comparing them to those obtained by a study based on participants diagnosed with pathology or histopathologyconfirmed invasive cutaneous melanoma, despite the fact that we did not have the necessary clinical data to directly estimate the rate of misclassification for the three skin cancers [6].

Future trials should preferably focus on the senior population with CM at high risk of recurrence, as well as those with metastatic illness, to better understand how immunotherapy interacts with the ageing immune system. Finally, a geriatric and patient-centered treatment approach in dermato-oncology could be beneficial for stratifying elderly patients with skin cancer across all available treatment options, improving treatment outcomes, quality of life, and compliance, and addressing the socioeconomic aspects of cancer care [7].

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