Dados do Trabalho

Título

RELATION BETWEEN SKIN NEOPLASM AND LATITUDE VARIATION; AN ANALYSIS OF THE EPIDEMIOLOGIC PROFILE OF CUTANEOUS CANCER IN BRAZIL.

Introdução

Malign skin neoplasm are the main cause of malign neoplasm that affect Brazilian population, according to the data obtained from National Institute of Cancer. It is known, that the occurrence of these neoplasm is directly related to ultraviolet solar ray incidence and skin sensitivity to the sun. Therefore, white skin individuals and people who live in low latitude, or high altitude are more likely to be struck.

Objetivo

To analyse the spread profile of malign skin neoplasm, according to the latitude variation.

Método

The former study was done according to the transversal epidemiologic study model. There were selected 18 Brazilian seaside cities, with similar altitudes close to sea level and at leats 350 thousand habitants in the 2010 census, from Brazilian Statistics Institute platform (IBGE). The data related to the percentage of white people in each city and the, hospitalizations and latitude from the analysed cities were respectively obtained from IBGE, DATASUS and Google Maps. In order to avoid bias related to the diversity of skin tons in Brazil, it was chosen limit the study to the most susceptible population to the solar effects (white skin individuals). The hospitalization numbers collected were from the time period of January, 2018, to April, 2021. All data were tabulated, calculated and analysed in the application Microsoft Excel 2016.

Resultado

In the studied period there were 96114 hospitalizations by skin cancer in Brazil. The male sex had 50714 cases (52.76%), while female sex had 45400 notified cases (47.24%). While doing the correlation between the latitude of all 18 seaside cities and the taxes of hospitalization by skin cancer, it was observed a significant positive correlation (r=0.493 and p=0.0375). The correlation showed a growing patten, contradicting literature, which points to a negative relation between the two variables.

Conclusão

It is defended by literature the inverse relation between latitude and malign skin neoplasm, which was not observed in the present study. It is possible to explain that by relating a higher underreporting in the northern cities, like Aracaju, where in, about, 93% o the hospitalizations by skin cancer did not contain information about its ethnicity. Another possible influence is a narrow range of latitude to which the study is limited. Thus, the contradiction presented here points to the need for more comprehensive studies.

Palavras-chave

Skin Neoplasms; Latitude; Incidence

Área

Oncologia - Tumores cutâneos e Sarcomas