Knowledge, belief and practices related to photo exposure and use of sunscreens: a community based survey

Background: Chronic sun exposure leads to various deleterious effects on the skin including pigmentary changes, skin cancers and photoaging. Being a modifiable factor, it can be adequately corrected by incorporating awareness and photo protective practices including use of sunscreens. This can have positive health outcomes in terms of decrease in skin cancers and other photo dermatoses. Aim of this study was to assess the knowledge and practices related to photo exposure and photo protection including use of sunscreens.
Methods: It was a community based cross sectional study of 1044 subjects conducted in a city of North India. Data was collected in the form of a questionnaire.
Results: Around 51% had knowledge about sun induced pigmentary abnormalities and photo aging on sun exposure while 39% attributed photo-exposure for causing skin cancers and around 10% were not aware of adverse effects of sun exposure. Only 45% were following general photo protective practices while32%were using sunscreens. Of those using sunscreens, 53% used it daily. Less than half of routine users were using it at least twice daily. Only 25 percent users were applying sunscreens over all photo exposed sites besides face. Majority (79.6%) were using sunscreens for prevention of non-cancerous skin effects like pigmentation and aging. Females, educated and high socioeconomic class had better overall knowledge and photo protective practices.
Conclusions: Knowledge and photo protective practices in our part of the region are much low in comparison to western countries and needs to be supplemented. Few of those despite having knowledge of the harmful effects of sun exposure were actually practising photo protective methods. Sizeable proportion of those using sunscreens were using them inadequately or improperly. Males, people belonging to lower socioeconomic strata and those lacking education were poor performers as per our study and more focus need to be put on such groups.