Southern exposure
Call it the San Diego syndrome.
North Idaho’s rate of melanoma, the often deadly skin cancer, is twice that of the rest of the state, mostly because so many California refugees and Arizona snowbirds have moved to the area’s resort communities, medical experts said this week.
Sandpoint, Coeur d’Alene and the rest of the region accounted for nearly a third of Idaho’s new melanoma cases in 2005, according to recently released figures from the Cancer Data Registry of Idaho.
The rate of melanoma increased more than 70 percent in the Panhandle Health District in the decade between 1995 and 2005 – far higher than the 21 percent increase logged in the state as a whole.
In 2005, North Idaho recorded 97 of the state’s 349 new cases.
“I think we’re kind of an island for people who’ve had a lot of sun exposure,” said Dr. Stephen Craig of North Idaho Dermatology, whose practice has treated 1,000 patients who’ve coped with the invasive skin cancer.
That includes David George, 55, who moved to Cocolalla, near Sandpoint, last year after retiring from his job as a parks electrical supervisor at the Port of San Diego.
Since January, he’s had four melanomas removed from his shoulders and back, little divots of skin with deadly potential to spread.
“They were basically freckles that were kind of long and a little larger and had probably changed color,” said George, who survived lung cancer diagnosed eight years ago. “Dr. Craig has quite the eye. Pretty much every one he spotted out were melanomas.”
Craig has learned to look sharp in the last few years as his client load has filled up with people from sun-saturated states.
“A higher proportion of my patients come from California, Arizona and Nevada,” he said.
That jibes with information from the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce, where ZIP code records showed nearly half of the almost 500 relocation packets mailed in 2004 went to California addresses.
Newcomers also arrived from Arizona, Nevada and Texas, according to statistics tracked by Raechelle Clark of the chamber’s visitors bureau.
Add to that the folks who spend summers in North Idaho and winters anywhere warm, and you can add the snowbird effect to the skin cancer statistics.
“All of a sudden on April 1, I’m busier,” said Craig, one of four dermatologists in the region. “I’ll spend an extra three hours to six hours a week doing skin cancer surgery.”
The rate of melanoma jumped dramatically between 2004 and 2005, from nearly 25 per 100,000 to more than 45 per 100,000. The spike stumped Craig and Christopher J. Johnson, an epidemiologist with the Cancer Data Registry of Idaho.
Maybe North Idaho dermatologists report statistics more faithfully, Johnson said. But he doesn’t believe that accounts for the increase. Craig said he believes the numbers reflect reality.
“It just was telling me what I’d seen in my own practice, which is that melanoma is more common,” he said.
People who’ve spent their lives in the sun are more likely to develop skin cancer, including melanoma, Craig said. Melanoma is the most deadly type of skin cancer, accounting for about 80 percent of deaths. The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 8,100 people will die from the disease this year.
For George, who lived all his life in San Diego, those are sobering numbers.
“I pretty much spent every summer at the beach,” he said. “I did work outside, but I’ve always put sunscreen on my arms and face.”
He’s been sensitive to sun exposure for the past two decades and will be even more so now that he’s had a bout with melanoma.
“The thing about melanoma is it’s really insidious,” he said. “You can think of it as a weed, where the root grows down, and if it goes into a blood system, it will break off and go anywhere in your body.”
Craig has spotted seven other suspicious sites on George’s body, and he plans to have them checked out soon.
“There are no symptoms,” he said. “By the time you feel a symptom, well, I won’t say it’s too late, but it’s very, very complicated.”