Prevalence of self-skin exams and full body skin exams among patients with disabilities.

ABSTRACT

Full body skin exams and self-skin exams are screening methods associated with reduced skin cancer incidence due to earlier detection and treatment of lesions. We performed a retrospective analysis on skin cancer screening and risk factors from the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS). The study cohort comprised a weighted population of 478,008,736 respondents, of whom 26,727,370 were patients with disabilities. Respondents with disabilities reported a lower frequency of full body skin exams (OR 0.74; CI 95% 0.69-0.79; P < 0.001) and self-skin exams (OR 0.85; CI 95% 0.78-0.91; P < 0.001), compared to respondents without disabilities. Lower rates of self-guided and clinician-guided screening may adversely affect skin cancer-related morbidity and mortality in persons with disabilities. Future research is needed to identify barriers to self-skin exams and full body skin exams in this population.