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Lower-extremity lymphedema associated with more skin cancer risk

Publish date: November 15, 2023

Alicia Ault

TOPLINE:

Lower-extremity (LE) lymphedema increases the risk for all types of skin cancer on the lower extremities.

METHODOLOGY:

In the retrospective cohort study, researchers reviewed reports at Mayo Clinic for all patients who had LE lymphedema, limiting the review to those who had an ICD code for lymphedema.
4,437 patients with the ICD code from 2000 to 2020 were compared with 4,437 matched controls.
The records of patients with skin cancer diagnoses were reviewed manually to determine whether the skin cancer, its management, or both were a cause of lymphedema; cancers that caused secondary lymphedema were excluded.
This is the first large-scale study evaluating the association between LE lymphedema and LE skin cancer.

TAKEAWAY:

211 patients (4.6%) in the LE lymphedema group had any ICD code for LE skin cancer, compared with 89 (2%) in the control group.
Among those with LE lymphedema, the risk for skin cancer was 1.98 times greater compared with those without lymphedema (95% confidence interval, 1.43-2.74; P < .001). Cases included all types of skin cancer.
Nineteen of 24 patients with unilateral LE lymphedema had a history of immunosuppression.
In the group of 24 patients with unilateral LE lymphedema, the lymphedematous LE was more likely to have one or more skin cancers than were the unaffected LE (87.5% vs. 33.3%; P < .05), and skin cancer was 2.65 times more likely to develop on the affected LE than in the unaffected LE (95% CI, 1.17-5.99; P = .02).

IN PRACTICE:

“Our findings suggest the need for a relatively high degree of suspicion of skin cancer at sites with lymphedema,” senior author, Afsaneh Alavi, MD, professor of dermatology at the Mayo Clinic, said in a Mayo Clinic press release reporting the results.

SOURCE:

The study was conducted by researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Meharry Medical College, Nashville. It was published in the November 2023 Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

LIMITATIONS:

This was a single-center retrospective study, and patients with LE lymphedema may be overdiagnosed with LE skin cancer because they have a greater number of examinations.

DISCLOSURES:

Dr. Alavi reports having been a consultant for AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim, InflaRx, Novartis, and UCB SA and an investigator for Processa Pharmaceuticals and Boehringer Ingelheim. The other authors had no disclosures.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.