The pattern of dermatological disorders among patients attending the Dermatology outpatient department of a tertiary care hospital in Kolkata

Abstract

Introduction

The pattern of the dermatological disease varies from country to country and even between geographical areas within a country. This present study aims to elucidate the dermatological patterns observed in a tertiary care hospital setting in West Bengal, India, while concurrently examining the sociodemographic characteristics of the patient population.

Materials and methods: This descriptive observational study with cross sectional design, was conducted among 214 patients, in the Dermatology outpatient department NRSMCH, Kolkata, between 01/02/24-28/02/24. The patients were selected based on a systematic random sampling method. The dermatologists on duty on the day of data collection identified the diagnosis.  A predesigned pretested schedule was used for recording the variables. All collected data were entered into Microsoft Excel, cleaned, checked for consistency and analyzed using SPSS (version 20).                 

Results: Most patients were male (57.9%), Hindu (59.3%), having education upto primary level (37.4%) and belonging to SES class IV (37.4%). Self-reported co-morbidities were present in 27.6% of the patients.  Almost one fifth (18.7%) of the patients had similar disease among family members during the same time. The study population could be almost equally divided between infective (49.5%) and non-infective cases (50.5%). The most common diagnosis overall was tinea (23.8%). Tinea was also the commonest infectious/ parasitic disease in the study population, followed by Scabies (12.6%). Among non-infectious diseases, the commonest was dermatitis (seborrheic, atopic and unspecified) seen in 13.1% of the patients, followed by acne vulgaris (8.9%) and pigmentation disorders (including vitiligo/ melasma/ post inflammatory tatoo pigmentation) (5.1%).Higher proportion of patients in the infectious group were in the age group 35-44 years (41.9%), than the non-infectious group where the highest proportion of patients were in the 15–34-year age group (52.4%). Significantly higher proportion of patients with infectious disease had a family member suffering from similar diseases at the same time (26.7% vs 11%, p=0.003). 

Conclusion: The findings of this study highlight the fact that along with medical treatment, health education is also necessary to curb the spread of dermatological diseases. Preventive and curative health services like awareness regarding hygiene, achieve a considerable reduction in the prevalence of skin disorders.