Multiple Skin Cancers Following Psoralen and Ultraviolet A Treatment of Psoriasis

Copyright © 2014 The Korean Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. www.e-acfs.org pISSN 2287-1152 eISSN 2287-5603 145 Correspondence: Sang Gue Kang Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Soonchunhyang University Seoul Hospital, Soonchunhyang University College of Medicine, 53 Daesagwanro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul 140-743, Korea E-mail: [email protected] *This work was supported by Soonchunhyang University Research Fund. Received August 4, 2014 / Revised November 10, 2014 / Accepted December 5, 2014 Psoriasis is a common inflammatory disease of the skin and joints. It usually occurs on the skin of the elbow and knee, but can involve any body surface area including scalp, hand, and foot. Psoriasis is a clinical diagnosis made from the presence of skin changes such as scaliness, redness, plaques, papules, or patches. This inflammatory condition has been associated with increased risks for cardiovascular disease, inflammatory bowel disease, and certain types of cancer. Currently, there is no consensus regarding the classification of its severity. However, percentage of body surface, psoriasis area severity index score, and dermatology life quality index score are widely used to classify its severity [1]. In moderate to severe psoriasis, there are multiple therapeutic options, including phototherapy, immunosuppressors, and biologic targeted therapy. Of these, the combination of psoralen and ultraviolet A (PUVA) has been used widely as an effective means to induce remission of psoriasis, but high-dose PUVA is reported to increase the risk of skin cancer [2]. In this report, we present a patient with psoriasis under long-term high-dose PUVA therapy who developed conMultiple Skin Cancers Following Psoralen and Ultraviolet A Treatment of Psoriasis