Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: The most common types of non-melanoma skin cancer are basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). AKIEC -Actinic keratoses (Solar keratoses) and intraepithelial carcinoma (Bowen’s disease)- are common non-invasive precursors of SCC, which may progress to invasive SCC, if left untreated. Due to the importance of early detection in cancer treatment, this study aimed to propose a computer-based model for identification non-melanoma malignancies.
Methods: In this analytic study, 327 AKIEC, 513 BCC, and 840 benign keratosis images from human against machine with 10000 training dermoscopy images (HAM10000) were extracted. From each of these three types, 90% of the images were designated as the training set and the remaining images were considered as the test set. A deep learning convolutional neural network (CNN) was developed for skin cancer detection by using AlexNet (Krizhevsky, et al., 2012) as a pretrained network. First, the model was trained on the training images to discriminate between benign and malignant lesions. In comparison with conventional methods, the main advantage of the proposed approach is that it does not need cumbersome and time-consuming procedures of lesion segmentation and feature extraction. This is because CNNs have the capability of learning useful features from the raw images. Once the system was trained, it was validated with test data to assess the performance. Study was carried out at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, in January and February, 2020.

Background: Non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSCs) are among the most prevalent malignancies globally. Investigating their characteristics and treatment-related outcomes can significantly contribute to optimizing management strategies including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. This study aimed to examine the characteristics of NMSCs and the complications following surgical treatment (such as necrosis and bleeding).
Methods: This is a retrospective descriptive cross-sectional study which was conducted to investigate the features of patients initially diagnosed with NMSC (confirmed by histopathological examination of the lesion) at dermatology ward of Afzalipour Hospital, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, between 2018 and 2021. Inclusion criteria were definitive diagnosis (based on the result of pathology) of an NMSC and undergoing surgical management. Exclusion criteria included incomplete patient records. Relevant data were extracted and recorded using a data collection form. Finally, all collected information was statistically analyzed according to the study objectives, and the overall frequency of NMSC surgeries, as well as their frequency based on study variables, was reported descriptively.
Results: A total of 37 NMSC surgeries were performed. The majority were basal cell carcinomas located on the face. Over half of the patients were male, and most had underlying medical conditions despite lacking common risk factors such as smoking and sun exposure. The most common flap techniques used were rotational flap, island pedicle flap, and H-plasty flap. Two complications were observed: one case of bleeding at the surgical site and one case of wound edge necrosis, both occurring one week post-operation.
Conclusion: In the southeastern region of Iran, NMSCs requiring surgical treatment showed a lower prevalence than anticipated. However, their pathological and demographic characteristics were consistent with global observations. The incidence of post-surgical complications was also low. Nevertheless, future studies with larger sample sizes in this region and across the country are recommended to enhance the reliability of these findings.