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BIODERMA Congress Reports WCCS 2022

Reports written by Prof. Lise Boussemart (Dermatologist, France) and Dr. Maria Manuela Martinez Piva (Dermatologist, Argentina)

30 min read

Prof. Lise Boussemart
Dermatologist , France

Dear colleagues,

I am extremely pleased to present you these summaries from the World Congress on Cancers of the Skin, held in Buenos Aires from 26–29 October 2022 with the support of Bioderma. The congress has been postponed several times since 2020, so when it finally happened, the opening session was really quite emotional.

Speaker: Prof. Boris Bastian

Report written by Prof. Lise Boussemart

 

Following on from Prof. Boris Bastian's work to update the classification of the various types of melanoma (see the summary by Dr Manuela Martinez Piva), Prof. Claus Garbe listed the obstacles to the effective prevention of skin cancers, especially in Europe and the US (Garbe et al., EJC 2021).

He believes that Europe and the United States are struggling to see a reduction in skin cancer rates because there is not enough focus placed on prevention in the form of clothing as opposed to sunscreen. It appears that wearing just sunscreen encourages people stay in the sun for longer, which can ultimately be worse than not wearing it at all.

Whether they apply sunscreen or not, there is evidence that children get just as many naevi which progress with age (J Bauer et al., Am J Epidemiol 2005), but there is a significant fall in incidence when wearing a t-shirt, with or without shorts, and especially when wearing a hat. In practice, sunscreen is applied on average in the amount of 0.5mg/cm2 instead of 2mg/cm2.

Even low doses of UV (10% MED = minimal erythema dose) are mutagenic, irrespective of the presence of clinical sunburn. At these same doses, since there is no peeling of the skin, the keratinocytes (and of course the melanocytes) survive with their mutations. The best option is clothing and avoiding exposure.

Other countries have got the message: in Australia and New Zealand where people are strongly encouraged to cover up and seek shade, melanoma rates have been falling since 2010.

Prof. Garbe was controversial to the point of accusing the dermatologists present of being responsible for the rise in skin cancers if we ourselves only recommend sunscreen.

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