3. HOW COMMON IS MELANOMA?

According to a review conducted by The Australia Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) in 2001 Australia and New Zealand have the highest incidence and mortality rate of melanoma in the world3.  The New Zealand Health Information Service (2004) place the lifetime risk of a white skinned person developing melanoma as 1 in 154.  To put this in perspective approximately 8,800 Australians are diagnosed with melanoma and 1,000 die from melanoma each year.  Furthermore, The Melanoma Foundation claims that because melanoma affects a lot of young people it accounts for the loss of more productive years then any other cancer5.

Melanoma is one of the few cancers with an increased incidence rate.  Some of this increase may be due to improve registration of melanoma incidences6.   Below are graphs illustrating the trends of both incidence and mortality from melanoma.

 
Click for larger view

Incidence of melanoma of the skin
Source: Cancer in Australia, 1999, AIHW & AACR, 2002 

  
Click for larger view

Death rates for melanoma of the skin
Source: AIHW National Mortality Database