Researchers highlighted the dangers associated with indoor tanning, pointing out that the practice can land people in the emergency room.
Occurrences such as skin burns, eye injuries and fainting were among some of the most frequent tanning-related effects treated in emergency departments at U.S. hospitals, JAMA Internal Medicine reported. Indoor tanning is often discouraged because it uses ultraviolet (UV) light, which is a known carcinogen, but little research has been done on the more-immediate effects of the dangerous habit.
"Indoor tanning exposes users to intense UV radiation, which is a known carcinogen. However, little is known about the more immediate adverse outcomes of indoor tanning. To our knowledge, this study provides the first national estimates of indoor tanning-related injuries treated in US hospital emergency departments (EDs)," the researchers wrote in their study abstract.
To make their findings the researchers looked at tanning-related injury data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was collected between 2003 and 2012.
The researchers determined 3,234 indoor tanning-related injuries, on average, were treated each year in U.S. hospitals over the course of the study period. These patients were 82.2 percent female, 77.8 percent non-Hispanic white, and 35.5 percent were between the ages of 18 and 24. The injuries consisted of 79.5 percent skin burns. 9.6 percent loss of consciousness, and 5.8 eye injuries.
"Most patients were treated in the ED and released, not requiring hospitalization. However, burns severe enough to warrant an ED visit clearly indicate overexposure to UV radiation and increase skin cancer risk," the researchers wrote in the study.
The finding were published Dec. 15 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
