US states with fewer diagnoses of melanoma have the highest rates of death from the disease, a new study says.
Researchers from the University of Utah Health found that the states with the highest incidence of skin cancer - Oregon, Washington, Utah, Minnesota, Vermont and New Hampshire - have the best survival rates.
However, the states with the lowest incidence - Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Indiana, Illinois and Nevada - have the worst survival rates.
States that had both high incidence and high mortality rates of melanoma have more white residents - who are most prone to the disease - but may also have more specialists who take more severe cases with poor survival odds, the researchers believe.
A new study found e states with the highest incidence of skin cancer - Oregon, Washington, Utah, Minnesota, Vermont and New Hampshire - have the best survival rates (pictured)
Melanoma begins in the melanocytes, a type of skin cell that makes melanin and gives skin a tan or brown color.
The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 96,000 people will be diagnosed with melanoma in the US in 2019 and that more than 7,200 will die.
Skin cancer is the most common cancer and - although melanoma only accounts for one percent of skin cancers - it causes the majority of skin cancer deaths.
For the study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, the researchers looked at the mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) each state.
Data was collected from the United States Cancer Statistics database between 1999 and 2014 and the MIR was collected by dividing the mortality rate by the incidence rate.
The researchers found that Hawaii had the lowest MIR and Alaska had the highest.
In fact, Alaska was the only state in which survival worsened significantly over the course of the study period.
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