Dhoti cancer – A name forgotten!!!

Abstract

Skin cancers are uncommon in India with less than 1% incidence and among all sites of occurrence, waist line as a site of occurrence is again uncommon. This could be mostly attributed to the attire among men and women in India. Saree and dhoti are still the traditional costumes among Indian women and men respectively. Wearing them tight around the waist leads to pigmentation, scarring and ulceration. Repeated trauma leads to subsequent malignant transformation. The usage of terms ‘saree cancer ‘ and ‘dhoti cancer’ is less commonly seen nowadays eventhough it was proposed long back in 1945 and has been unknown to many in the recent times with very few papers published in mainstream medical journals. Herein, we report a case series of 12 patients with waistline cancer who presented at our centre between January 2001 till December 2020.