Profile of Skin Diseases among Patients Attending a Dermatology Outpatient Clinic: A Record-based Cross-sectional Study from a Tertiary Care Centre in Northern Kerala, India

Introduction: Epidemiological studies to determine the pattern of skin diseases among patients attending a hospital are important for proper healthcare planning and management. They give insight to the epidemiology of diseases. Similar studies have not been conducted in Northern Kerala recently. Aim: To identify the pattern of diseases among patients who attended the Outpatient (OP) section of the Department of Dermatology in our hospital. Materials and Methods: The present study was retrospective, record-based cross-sectional study in which OP registers of the Department of Dermatology from December 2018 to November 2019 were analysed retrospectively. Skin diseases were grouped into different groups and the frequency of cases in each group was studied. These were also categorised according to different age groups, gender and month of their OP visit. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. Data analysis was performed using Microsoft Excel and R software (R version 3.6.1 (2019-07-05)). Results: Out of the 17,907 new patients, 42.7% were infections, of which fungal infections were the most common. Eczema (27.7%) was the common group. Significant difference in male: female ratio was seen in melasma (14:95), leprosy (13:2), drug reaction (1:28), connective tissue diseases (0:18) and Vesiculobullous (VB) (0:4). Monthly split-up of cases showed increased frequency of some groups of diseases during some months these include Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) in February-9/20 (45%), leprosy in May-4/15 (26.7%), drug reaction in December-9/29 (31%), connective tissue diseases in April-6/18 (33.3%) and VB diseases in February 4/4 (100%). Conclusion: Infections and eczemas which could be managed in primary healthcare set-up contributed to majority of the OP attendance of our tertiary care centre. The peripheral institutions should be strengthened in manpower and the level of knowledge and skills. More focused and effective training of medical students, continuing medical education for general practitioners and the implementation of family physician system should gain more importance in our country. Increased frequency of some diseases was seen during some months these findings have to be confirmed by longer duration studies.