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Direct health care cost from skin cancer, caused mainly by excessive indoor tanning, is recorded as the reason behind the $343 million yearly expense in medical cost in the United States. Lost productivity and early deaths by patients with melanoma and other skin malignancies, tied to using tanning beds, were also included in the study.

According to a report by Fox News, on top of the $343 million yearly health care cost for skin cancer treatment, a total of $127 billion over the lifetime of a person diagnosed with skin malignancies are also lost due to gone productivity and early deaths among skin cancer patients.

The study conducted on how much health care cost is spent caused by tanning beds is a first. Indoor tanning devices have been well-known contributors in putting a person at risk for skin cancer. However, a comprehensive documentation on how much it costs to treat this condition is only made available through this new study. Hugh Waters of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill lead the study and was published in the Journal of Cancer Policy.

In the US alone, 30 million people use a tanning bed at least once a year. Even in the UK, the NHS reveal that the cost of cancer treatments for some patients exceeds £80,000 and is currently unsustainable for hospitals and health care services, Daily Mail UK reports. Drugs, treatments, therapies and reasonable pricing, are just some of the factors that affect the tremendous health care cost both patients and hospitals are facing nowadays.

The study calculated the total amount of health care cost for treating skin cancer and malignancies caused by tanning by tallying the average cost of treating such skin malignancies, including melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and basal cell carcinoma.

Data gathered revealed that in 2015, tanning beds were linked to 8,947 cases of melanoma, 168,000 cases of squamous cell carcinoma and at least 86,000 cases of basal cell carcinoma. On average, it was also found out that $5,064 per case is spent for treating melanoma alone while $1,168 was the average cost of treatment for other types of skin cancers.