Prevalence of benign, precancerous and malignant skin tumors in the elderly population in Mugla

Abstract

We sought to investigate the prevalence of skin tumors in Muğla, which has a Mediterranean climate and a high population of elderly people. This was a cross-sectional study conducted on patients, 65 years old and older, who consulted at our dermatology outpatient clinics between January 2014 and January 2015. Diagnoses of the patients were obtained and retrospectively evaluated from the electronic medical records of the hospital. Of 2297 geriatric patients, 50.8% were females and 49.2% were males. Of these patients, 12% had actinic keratosis, 5.4% had seborrheic keratosis, 2.1% had basal cell carcinoma, 0.8% had squamous cell carcinoma, and 0.1% had malignant melanoma. In patients <80 years old, the probability of actinic keratosis was 1.7 times more than that in patients ≥80 years old (p = 0.006). In addition, the probability of actinic keratosis was 1.7 times more in women than in men (p < 0.001). Among precancerous, benign and malignant skin tumors, actinic keratosis was the most common, followed by seborrheic keratosis, basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and malignant melanoma. Moreover, squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma were more frequently observed in the advanced geriatric age group and early geriatric age group, respectively.