Mayo Clinic released an announcement on a recently published paper which explored the correlation between patients with lymphedema in their extremities and skin cancer.
"Patients with lymphedema are not screened routinely by dermatologists, and inadequate screening may lead to delayed diagnosis and treatment. Our findings suggest the need for a relatively high degree of suspicion of skin cancer at sites with lymphedema. There is a need for raising awareness in clinicians seeing patients with lymphedema, and these patients may need regular skin cancer screenings, since early detection of skin cancer is critical.", said Afsaneh Alavi.
According to the Nov. 9 news release from Mayo Clinic, patients with lymphedema in their legs had a risk of skin cancer that is twice as high as those without the condition. Lymphedema is the swelling of the limbs caused by an accumulation of the fluid from the immune system, often caused by surgery, cancer treatments, or the removal of lymph nodes. The condition can also arise from inherited factors.
Dr. Afsaneh Alavi, led a team of researchers in studying 4,437 patients with lower extremity lymphedema over the course of 20 years. All patients were being treated at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Their findings were compared to the same study conducted on a control group without lymphedema to determine the level of increased risk. Researchers also found that in patients who only had lymphedema in one leg, the affected leg was almost three times as likely to be affected by skin cancer as compared to the unaffected leg.
While there was much higher rates of diagnoses of basal cell carcinomas and squamous cell carcinomas on lower extremities with lymphedema, it was determined that all common forms of skin cancer were more prevalent in patient with this condition. These cancers include squamous cell carcinoma, basal cell carcinoma, melanoma and angiosarcoma.
