Melanoma publications do not increase as much as the incidence of melanoma in the last two decades

Abstract

In recent years, the incidence of melanoma has increased more dramatically than any other malignancy. We compared the number of publications between melanoma and other cancers in the last two decades. We performed a systematic search on PubMed using the search terms "melanoma" and "cancer" to determine the number of publications on melanoma and other cancers. The numbers and lifetime risk ratios of both melanoma and other cancer patients by year were obtained from the "Cancer Statistics" articles published annually by the American Cancer Society. The number of both melanoma and cancer publications increased at the same rate (3.01-fold), and the ratio of melanoma publications to all cancer publications did not change over the years: nearly, 3.4% on average. Melanoma rates increased faster than other cancers; 2.02 and 1.44 times, respectively. Similarly, the incidence of melanoma increased from 3.91% to 5.47%. In conclusion, the increase in the number of publications related to melanoma could not meet the dramatic increase in the number of melanoma patients.