Patients With Sunburn Most Commonly Visit Dermatologists in an Outpatient Setting

Sunburn is most commonly seen in the outpatient setting by dermatologists, according to a recent publication in JAMA Dermatology.

“We aimed to investigate sunburn in claims data, which to our knowledge has not previously been done, and characterize the clinical settings and demographic characteristics of patients who receive sunburn diagnoses,” wrote the study authors.

Researchers used a deidentified database of commercially insured patients to identify sunburn visits from January 2009 to December 2018 using diagnosis codes. The primary outcomes were patient demographic characteristics, clinical settings, clinician specialties, management provided, and geographic location.

A total of 91.6% of patients had one encounter with sunburn diagnosis, 6.5% had two, and 1.9% had three or more. Patients were more likely to be young women. Approximately 20% of encounters were in the emergency or urgent care setting, 26% with dermatologists, and 22% with family medicine clinicians. Most encounters were for nonspecific sunburn (76.5%), followed by first degree (6.2%), 17% second degree, and 0.3% third degree. Most patients did not receive medical treatment.

“We found that sunburn is most commonly seen in the outpatient setting by dermatologists,” concluded the study authors. “Our results suggest that administrative data can be used to expand our ability to study sunburn beyond self-reported surveys and may represent a resource for public health initiatives in skin cancer prevention and detection,” they continued.

Reference
Nowakowska MK, Li Y, Garner DC, et al. Clinical settings and demographic characteristics of patients with sunburn. JAMA Dermatol. 2021;e212923. doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2021.2923