Self-reported naevus density may lead to misclassification of melanoma risk
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Author(s)
Betz-Stablein, B
Koh, U
Plasmeijer, EI
Janda, M
Aitken, JF
Soyer, HP
Green, AC
Griffith University Author(s)
Year published
2019
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DEAR EDITOR, The incidence of cutaneous melanoma continues to rise, imposing a sizeable burden on health services and society.1 The strongest known risk factor for melanoma is the presence of many melanocytic naevi.2
Naevus prevalence studies use a variety of counting methods from objective counts by dermatologists/research staff to self-counts. This diversity likely contributes to the variation seen in prevalence estimates.3 Expert counts are more accurate but are labour intensive and costly. Self-counts by untrained people are attractive because they facilitate data collection from larger populations. An Australian study ...
View more >DEAR EDITOR, The incidence of cutaneous melanoma continues to rise, imposing a sizeable burden on health services and society.1 The strongest known risk factor for melanoma is the presence of many melanocytic naevi.2 Naevus prevalence studies use a variety of counting methods from objective counts by dermatologists/research staff to self-counts. This diversity likely contributes to the variation seen in prevalence estimates.3 Expert counts are more accurate but are labour intensive and costly. Self-counts by untrained people are attractive because they facilitate data collection from larger populations. An Australian study showed a moderately strong relationship between adults’ self-reported totalbody naevus density (none, few, some or many, based on images) and a dermatologist’s total-body naevus count.4 The authors proposed that self-reported categorical measures of naevi (naevus density) better reflect dermatologist counts than self-reported absolute counts.4 Given the importance of accurate classification, we compared the characteristics of those who correctly classified their naevus density, based on a dermatologist’s naevus count, with those who did not.
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View more >DEAR EDITOR, The incidence of cutaneous melanoma continues to rise, imposing a sizeable burden on health services and society.1 The strongest known risk factor for melanoma is the presence of many melanocytic naevi.2 Naevus prevalence studies use a variety of counting methods from objective counts by dermatologists/research staff to self-counts. This diversity likely contributes to the variation seen in prevalence estimates.3 Expert counts are more accurate but are labour intensive and costly. Self-counts by untrained people are attractive because they facilitate data collection from larger populations. An Australian study showed a moderately strong relationship between adults’ self-reported totalbody naevus density (none, few, some or many, based on images) and a dermatologist’s total-body naevus count.4 The authors proposed that self-reported categorical measures of naevi (naevus density) better reflect dermatologist counts than self-reported absolute counts.4 Given the importance of accurate classification, we compared the characteristics of those who correctly classified their naevus density, based on a dermatologist’s naevus count, with those who did not.
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Journal Title
British Journal of Dermatology
Copyright Statement
© 2019 British Association of Dermatologists. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Self‐reported naevus density may lead to misclassification of melanoma risk, British Journal of Dermatology, which has been published in final form at 10.1111/bjd.18802. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving (http://olabout.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-828039.html)
Note
This publication has been entered into Griffith Research Online as an Advanced Online Version.
Subject
Clinical sciences
Oncology and carcinogenesis