Online Program

Long-Term and High-Exposure Effects of NB-UVB Phototherapy in Relation to Increased Risks of Skin Cancers: A 30-Year Cancer Registry Linkage Study (309671)

*Khaled Bedair, Faculty of Commerce, Tanta University 
Khaled F Bedair, Population Health and Genomics, School of Medicine, University of Dundee 
Ahmed Elhadad, Faculty of Computers and Information, South Valley University 
Safwat Hamad, Faculty of Computers and Information, Ain Shams Universiy 
Robert S Dawe, University of Dundee 

Keywords: Electronic Health Record, Record Linkage, Big Data , Cancer Research, NB-UVB phototherapy, Standardized Incidence Ratio

Phototherapy (‘light treatment’) is widely used for many skin diseases. This study will describe the long-term carcinogenic risk of NB-UVB phototherapy (and other phototherapies) in humans. Particularly, this study will investigate whether the ongoing cumulative exposure with NB-UVB increases the risk of BCC, SCC, and melanoma in the Scottish population. Potential interaction effects of NB-UVB with PUVA and/or UVA1 will be explored as well as clinical and genetics risk factors, and available patient’s baseline characteristics. All the Electronic Health Records (EHR)of patients (~62,753) treated with a phototherapy in the Scottish population from the Scottish phototherapy database (PhotoSys) for the observation period of 1985 to 2017 will be identified. This cohort will then be linked with the Scottish Population Cancer Registry (SMR06) using the CHI number, dates of death and migration will be obtained from the Population Central Registry (GRO). The follow-up will begin 6 months after the last day of the first treatment course and end on the date of migration, death, or 31 December 2017, whichever comes first. The numbers of observed cases and the person-years at risk will be calculated separately for each year in the follow up interval by gender and 5-year age groups. The standardized incidence ratio (SIR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) will be calculated using the Poisson distribution. Using this methodology, we will be able to characterize the incidence rate of each of BCC, SCC, and melanoma, quantify the initial and cumulative effects of phototherapies and prognostic factors in terms of increasing the risk of skin cancers for the population of Scotland. Likewise, we will understand both the inter-recurrences dependence within subject and the dependence between the recurrences of different cancer types. The research findings of this study will be beneficial to big data scientists and statistician, patients, and cancer researchers and practitioners.