Increasing Frequency of Seborrheic Keratosis Diagnoses as a Favorable Consequence of Teledermatology-Based Skin Cancer Screening: A Cross-sectional Study of 34,553 Patients

Abstract

Background

Screening of skin cancer by teledermatology (TD) has improved the early detection of skin cancer by enhancing access to skin cancer clinics.

Objective

We sought to analyze how TD-based skin cancer screening has changed the frequency of consultations for benign lesions.

Patients and methods

A cross-sectional study including teleconsultations received during a 7-year period was conducted to analyze and compare the trendlines of each lesion type over the study period. Trendlines were analyzed using a linear regression model with the R-squared (R ²) test for goodness of fit.

Results

A total of 34,553 teleconsultations were included in the study. Seborrheic keratoses, followed by benign melanocytic lesions, were the most frequent lesions diagnosed. The pick-up rate for malignant lesions was 1:8.6 teleconsultations. Seborrheic keratoses and precancerous lesions showed a positive trendline with good fit to the linear model (R ² = 0.8 and R ² = 0.8, respectively). Tis-T1 malignant melanoma (in situ melanoma or melanoma with a Breslow thickness <1 mm) showed an increasing trendline with moderate-to-low fit to the model (R ² = 0.4).

Conclusions

TD-based screening of skin cancer is associated with an increasing rate of consultations involving seborrheic keratoses, which can be considered a consequence of improved access to dermatologists resulting from TD implementation.

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