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INTRODUCTION: skin cancer is the third most frequent cancer in Panama. This neoplasm can be prevented in 85 % of the cases by reducing sun exposure. There is little information about the relationship between sun exposure practices and the degree of photodamage in the Panamanian population. Our main objective is to correlate the sun exposure practices and the degree of photodamage of people that participated in the skin cancer prevention campaign of the Complejo Hospitalario Dr. Arnulfo Arias Madrid of Panama during May, 2009.
METHODS: An analytical and correlational study. The 108 patients that were attended in the campaign became part of the study. The level of correlation between the sun exposure practices and the degree of photodamage was calculated with the Kappa Index.
RESULTS: 35,19 % of the patients were phototype IV, 14,81 % used sun screen daily, 84,26 % had bad sun exposure practices and 65,74% had mild to moderate photodamage. The degree of correlation between current sun exposure practices and the degree of photodamage was poor (? = 0,0251) and it wasn’t statistically significative (p= 0,65).
CONCLUSION: there was no correlation between current sun exposure practices and the degree of photodamage in this study. This can be explained because photodamage is an accumulative process and the patients usually answer questions about practices with the information of their current practices and not with the information of the sun exposure practices that they had in the past.
