A retrospective study on non melanoma skin cancer in Cancer Institute, Imam Khomeini Medical Center, Tehran, Iran

Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer (NMSC), including squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common cancer in Iran. This study aimed to infer implicit information in the cases of NMSC patients referred to the Cancer Institute of Tehran.
A number of 865 cases of NMSC related to 2007-2015 years were selected from the archives of Cancer Institute using simple random sampling method. Initially, epidemiological variables, were extracted and after preprocessing of the data, descriptive statistics were used to classify and graphic display of information.
The mean age for patients was identified 65 years and the highest and lowest numbers of cases were in age groups of 69-60 and 19-10 years respectively. The incidence of SCC was higher than BCC in the first four age decades and this trend was reversed in the next decades. About 56% of cases were BCC and 44% were SCC and frequency of NMSC in men was 2/33 times more than women. The head/neck and trunk were the highest and lowest involved positions. The disease had relapsed at least twice in 32% of cases. The disease history showed that most of patients were previously affected by kinds of cancers, cardiovascular or metabolic diseases. The occupation of 114 patients was found to be as high-risk jobs. Most patients were referred to Cancer Institute from northern and western parts of the country.
Along with other studies, we found more cases of BCC than SCC, involvement of patients over 60 years at the head-neck and a previous history of cancer. But against other studies, SCC cases was found more in the first four decades of life than BCC cases, feet affected twice than hands and the locality of most cases was found in high latitudes. Patient records are potential resources that can help management of the diseases.