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MELANOMA DETECTED LATER AMONG BLACKS: Most of the prevention/detection efforts steered toward whites where disease is more common.
*There is a myth that melanin in the skin of black folks and darker-skinned peoples of the world are a natural sun block for skin cancer. This notion couldn’t be further from the truth.
Not only can blacks and Hispanics develop melanoma, the potentially deadly skin cancer, but researchers at the University of Miami have shown the disease is diagnosed at much later stages in those ethnic groups than in whites.
“More likely, there is less awareness among patients and health-care providers that melanoma can occur in ethnic populations and patients with darker pigmentation," said lead researcher Dr. Robert Kirsner, professor and vice chairman of dermatology and cutaneous surgery at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.
His team studied 1,690 melanoma cases reported in Miami-Dade County between 1997 and 2002. Among these, 1,176 occurred in white patients, 485 in Hispanic patients and 29 in non-Hispanic black patients. The population of whites and blacks in Miami-Dade County is approximately the same.
Compared with whites, the Hispanic and black patients were more likely to have advanced-stage melanomas. Sixteen percent of Hispanics and 31 percent of blacks had cancer that had metastasized -- spread to other organs or tissues -- compared with 9 percent of whites. Moreover, 52 percent of black patients had regional or distant-stage melanoma, the most severe stages, compared with 26 percent of Hispanic and 16 percent of white patients.
Kirsner said it's possible that blacks and Hispanics have a more aggressive type of melanoma, but the disparity most likely comes from lack of awareness in minority populations. As a consequence, those patients aren't screened as often and lesions are not detected as early as in whites.
Kirsner said: "So a diagnosis is delayed until a late stage and that correlates with worse survival. Patients' diagnoses with thin melanomas have nearly a 100 percent survival. However, if it has spread, then survival goes down to 16 percent. So survival is worse in Hispanics and blacks."
Their findings appear in the June issue of the Archives of Dermatology. To learn more about melanoma, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
