American Journal of Epidemiology Vol. 155, No. 12 : 1128-1136
Copyright © 2002 by The Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health
PRACTICE OF EPIDEMIOLOGY |
How Good Are Parents at Assessing Melanocytic Nevi on Their Children? A Study Comparing Parental Counts, Dermatologist Counts, and Counts Obtained from Photographs
1 Skin Cancer Research Group, School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
2 Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
3 Victorian Melanoma Service and Dermatology Unit, Monash University Department of Medicine, Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
4 Division of Dermatology, Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
The objective of this study was to evaluate agreement among counts of melanocytic nevi made by parents, counts made by a dermatologist, and counts made by assessment of photographs. In 1990, 421 schoolchildren aged 6–15 years from Townsville, Queensland, Australia (latitude 19.16°S), participated in the Eastern Australian Childhood Nevus Study. In an agreement study, parents were asked to mark on an anatomic diagram any melanocytic nevi greater than or equal to 2 mm in diameter and greater than or equal to 5 mm in diameter they observed on their child's back prior to the child's examination by a dermatologist; 324 parents responded (a 77% response rate). Standardized slide photographs of each child's back were taken, and melanocytic nevi were counted by an experienced non-medical-examiner upon projection. Agreement was assessed graphically and with the concordance correlation coefficient (rc). Parental counts of melanocytic nevi were similar to counts made by the dermatologist (n = 77; for nevi 
2 mm, rc = 0.51; for nevi 5 mm, rc = 0.78) and counts obtained from the photographs (n = 324; for nevi 2 mm, rc = 0.68; for nevi 5 mm, rc = 0.68). Few parents reported false-positive lesions. Parents tended to underestimate the number of melanocytic nevi greater than or equal to 2 mm in diameter (mean difference from dermatologist: -3.2, standard deviation 6.8; mean difference from photographs: -1.1, standard deviation 5.1), particularly when the density of melanocytic nevi was high. Agreement between dermatologist counts and photograph counts was high (for nevi 2 mm, rc = 0.80; for nevi 5 mm, rc = 0.87). The authors conclude that parents are capable of counting melanocytic nevi on their children's skin with some validity. In epidemiologic studies of children, counts of melanocytic nevi obtained from standardized photographs have the potential to replace counts made by physicians.
melanoma; nevi and melanomas; nevus, pigmented
Abbreviations: CI, confidence interval; SD, standard deviation
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  S. Gallus, L. Naldi, P. Carli, C. La Vecchia, and the Italian Group for Epidemiologic Research in De Nevus Count on Specific Anatomic Sites as a Predictor of Total Body Count: A Survey of 3,406 Children from Italy Am. J. Epidemiol., August 15, 2007; 166(4): 472 - 478. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 A. A. Marghoob, S. Dusza, S. Oliveria, and A. C. Halpern Number of Satellite Nevi as a Correlate for Neurocutaneous Melanocytosis in Patients With Large Congenital Melanocytic Nevi Arch Dermatol, February 1, 2004; 140(2): 171 - 175. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|