A Clinical and Histopathologic Study on Actinic Keratosis in the Province of Chungcheongnam-do

Kim, Sung Keun; Shin, Jung Woong; Lee, Sung Yul; Lee, Sang Hoon; Cho, Moon Kyun; Whang, Kyu Uang; Park, Young Lip; Nam, Doo Hyun; Cho, Hyun Deuk

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Actinic keratoses (AK) have been recognized as precancerous lesions, they have been recently considered to be an early in situ squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). However, there have been few studies to determine the clinical and histopathological characteristics of AK, and especially in the Province of Chungcheongnam-do.
Objective
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the clinicopathological characteristics of 80 cases of AK in the province of Chungcheongnam-do.
METHODS
The authors evaluated the clinical and histopathological features of 80 patients with AK at Soonchunhyang University Hospital in Cheonan from January 1998 to December 2008.
RESULTS
The ratio of male to female patients was 1:4.7. The age distribution ranged from 42 to 93 years old. Single lesions are more common than multiple lesions. The duration of lesions was variable with a mean duration of 25.1 months. The most commonly involved sites were the face and especially the cheek. The color was erythematous in 63.3% of the cases, brownish in 24.5%, dark-brownish in 9.5% and gray in 2.7%. Crust and scale were noted in 37.4% and 22.4% of the cases, respectively. SCC was associated with AK in 6.3% of the cases, basal cell carcinoma was associated with AK in 1.3%, and keratoacanthoma in 1.3%. The most common histopathological types of AK were atrophic types in 20.6%, and this was followed by the hypertrophic types in 18.6% of the cases and the hypertrophic and atrophic types in 14.7% of the cases.
CONCLUSION
Our results are similar to those of the previous reports. In addition, we observed a consistently higher incidence in females than males in the Korean reports and a more frequent incidence of single lesions than multiple lesions in the Asian reports. We found that AK is not easily distinguishable from SCC both clinically and cytologically. Thus, we suggest that biopsies and active treatments should be performed on AK lesions.