May 8, 2012 – In an update to its 2003 recommendation, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) now recommends counseling children, adolescents, and young adults ages 10 to 24 years who have fair skin about minimizing their exposure to ultraviolet radiation to reduce risk for and prevent incidence of skin cancer.
The USPSTF also concluded that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of counseling adults older than age 24 years about minimizing risks to prevent skin cancer.
A draft of this recommendation statement was posted for public comment from November 8, 2011 until December 8, 2011. The final recommendation statement appears in the May 8 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine and is available on the USPSTF Web site at /uspstf/recommendation/skin-cancer-screening. This Web page also includes a summary of the evidence the Task Force reviewed and a fact sheet that explains the final recommendation statement in plain language.
