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Showing posts from August, 2017

Alcohol and skin cancer: When the devil is ignoring the details

Summer has me thinking about skin cancer (I am a plastic surgeon after all) and recent reports that drinking alcohol increases the risk of skin cancer are not helping to ease my mind. "Drinking just one glass of beer or wine a day could give you skin cancer, scientists have warned," reports Britain’s Mail Online.   Researchers reached this conclusion by analyzing pooled results from previous studies (the notorious meta-analysis; see last month’s post.) It seems that every drink increases your odds of developing non-melanoma skin cancer by around 10 percent. But just as blending random wines together may produce something drinkable but lacking nuance, pooling results of different types of studies may obscure crucial details. With the specific question of wine consumption and skin cancer risk, the details are especially important. Is skin cancer risk the same with all types of alcohol? Granted, some of the studies are very well done and should not be dismissed out of ha