A Clinical Study of Basal Cell Carcinoma

Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is a non-melanocytic skin malignancy arising from basal cells of epidermis or follicular structures. Etiology of BCC is a multifactorial combination of genotype, phenotype, and environmental factors. There are several clinical variants of BCC including nodular, cystic, superficial, morphoeic, keratotic, pigmented and micronodular.

The aim of our study was to analyze the recent clinical trends of basal cell carcinoma by reviewing a single institution's experience.

Total number of 422 patients clinically diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma were included in the study. Data on age, gender, skin type, personal and family history, duration of disease, localization of lesions, clinical type of lesions, and recurrence rate were collected and analyzed. The data were statistically evaluated.

More than 80% of all BCC's were located on sun-exposed skin areas (p<0.05).The male /female ratio was 1:0.92. The nodular BCC was the most frequent type (59.2%), followed by the superficial (16.1%), pigmented (15.2%) and morphoeic (9.5%) types. The nodular and pigmented types were predominant located on the head and neck, whereas the trunk was the most common location for the superficial type (p<0.05). The tumor is commonly found in concomitance with skin lesion related to chronic sun exposure, such as actinic keratoses, solar lentigines and facial telangiectasia. During this study period, 41 cases showed recurrence of the cancer as the overall recurrence rate was 9.7%. There were no cases with metastasis or fatal outcome.

The factors related to the development of BCC were older age and exposure to ultraviolet rays both in recreational and in occupational form. The prevention of BCC is based on the knowledge of risk factors, early diagnosis and treatment, particularly in susceptible populations.