Solar exposure of head and cleavage of the Mexican population and its effect on the clinical assessment of skin phototype

BACKGROUND: The amount of UV rays that reach the ground as well as the UVA/UVB ratio depend on several factors such as latitude, season, cloud coverage and time of day, both UVA and UVB radiation are responsible of a great variety of skin disorders such as actinic keratoses, non-melanoma skin cancer and melanoma.

METHODS: In this work the solar radiation of face and chest is calculated for 80 Mexican-mestizo volunteers using their melanin concentration relative to a non-photoexposed area which were obtained using diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry.

RESULTS: The results show that the points of highest solar exposure are cheeks and cleavage, the points with lowest solar exposure are the chin and lower chest. It was also observed that the amount of solar exposure influenced the clinical assessment of skin phototype.

CONCLUSION: The results support the concept that proper education on solar preventive measures mainly on the head and cleavage is fundamental to reduce the incidence of photaging and skin cancer, and that diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry can be used to reduce the effect of chronic sun exposure in the determination of the skin phototype.