Frequency of Skin Diseases and its Associated Factors Among Patients Visiting a Dermatology Clinic

Abstract

Objective: To determine the frequency of skin diseases and its associated factors among patients visiting a dermatology clinic in Karachi.
Methods: A cross sectional study was carried out from December 2018 to May 2019 at Baqai Institute of Health sciences, Baqai Medical University, Karachi. Available relevant data of all patients visiting a selected dermatology clinic in Karachi for a period of two years, from 1st January 2017 to 31st December 2018, were retrospectively gathered and recorded on the study questionnaire by the principal investigator. Statistical package for social sciences version 19.0 was used for analysis. Chi-square test was applied to check associations between the independent variables and the study outcome whereas the significance level was set at 0.05. The duration of the study was six months.
Results: The study findings revealed that the highest frequency of skin diseases among the patients was of psoriasis (25.3%), followed by dermatitis (23.3%), scabies (14.1%), fungal infection (11.9%), acne (9.0%), folliculitis (4.4%), atopic dermatitis (4.1%), keloid (3.2%), warts (2.8%) and vitiligo (1.9%). Moreover, 51.2% of the patients came in the summer season. The study results also showed that season was found to be significantly associated with the diagnosis of the patients both among patients aged 25-49 years (p<0.001) and patients aged 50 years and above (p=0.002).

Conclusion: The most commonly presented skin diseases in descending order of frequency were psoriasis, dermatitis, scabies, fungal infections, and acne. Moreover, the season was found to be significantly associated with the diagnosis of the patients in two of the study age groups. Due efforts by all stakeholders such as imparting health education to the general public, increasing their awareness regarding the modes of transmission of common skin diseases, promoting healthy skin habits and improvement in practices of environmental sanitation are recommended.