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 (R2) 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 (R2 = 0.8 and R2 = 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 (R2 = 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.