Evaluation of the knowledges on skin cancers amongst patients attending the dental unit of a tertiary hospital in Cameroon

Abstract

Head and neck locations are the site of predilection for skin cancers. This is mainly due to the photoexposition of these areas and is made more important in our equatorial setting with high sunlight exposure, rising trend of skin bleaching and higher percentages of albinism. Hence, we sought to evaluate the knowledges of patients visiting at the dental service of a tertiary hospital on these skin cancers. We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional at the dental unit of the Garoua Regional Hospital over a period of one month. We included in our study all patients attending the dental unit willing to voluntarily take part in this survey and those not willing to voluntarily take part in this survey were excluded from our study. We carried out a consecutive sampling. We retained 69 participants with a mean age of 30 [24.0–38.0] years and a sex ratio of 0.71. 52.3 % of our participants had heard about skin cancer before, with 4.6 % having seen a patient with skin cancer, all of whom were family members. Regarding sunlight exposure, 56.9 % of our participants thought UV exposure can increase the risk of skin cancer, 29.2 % thought body areas exposed to sunlight were more at risk of having skin cancer. Even though 90.8 % thought these cancers were dangerous,50.8 % thought it could be treated only 1.5 % knew any means of treatment. Our findings show that compared to other population-based studies the knowledge level on skin cancers is lower.