PROGRESSION OF NON-MELANOMA SKIN CANCER CASES IN BRAZIL

Introduction: Skin cancer is a pathology of multifactorial etiology, resulting mainly from genetic alterations, environmental factors and lifestyle. There are three major types of skin cancer: melanoma, basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). BCC and SCC are often referred to as non-melanoma skin cancer and they are a health problem in Brazil due to their high incidence, as well as its related potential morbidity and mortality. Numerous studies, in recent years, highlight the difficult scenario of the country with the increase of cases of the disease, which makes it imperative to analyze the progression of the disease in Brazil. Objective: Analyze the prevalence and progression of non-melanoma skin cancer, in Brazil, in a period between 2015 and 2020. Methods: It corresponds to a quantitative epidemiological study, carried out an active search to obtain data through the Unified Health System database (DataSus) using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD10) concerning non-melanoma skin neoplasms. Using the variables: year of diagnosis between 2019 and 2020, gender and age range from 1 year old to over 80 years old. After gathering, the results obtained were tabulated in Microsoft Excel for analysis. Results: In a 6-year period 136.779 cases of nonmelanoma cancer were diagnosed. It is noticeable to observe an expressive increase in the number of cases 2.525 (2015); 2.415 (2016); 2.284 (2017); 26.209 (2018); 58.772 (2019); 44.575 (2020). Meaningfully, compared to the year of 2015, 2020 had an increase of, approximately 1.800%. In 2018, compared to 2017, 23,925 more cases were diagnosed. There is no major change in the number of cases when comparing genders. Conclusion: Non-melanoma skin cancer, unfortunately, is a very prevalent disease in Brazil. There has been a significant increase in the number of diagnoses of the disease in recent years, especially in the last 3 years, corroborating current studies about the country’s concern with the advancing number of cases of BCC and SCC. Thus, clearly the disease is a public health problem in Brazil and if it continues to rise rapidly the country’s health scenario is alarming.