A survey on skin disease and its impact on Quality of life

Abstract

Skin disease is one of the common human illnesses It is a multidimensional concept that encompasses psychological, social and financial consequences of the skin disease on the patients, their families and on society. Chronic and incurable skin diseases, such as allergy, psoriasis, fungal infection and eczema, are associated with significant morbidity in the form of physical discomfort and impairment of patients' quality of life. The aim of the study was to explore the level of awareness of risk factors related to skin disease and its impact on quality of life (QoL) in different Govt hospital patients in Bangladesh. A pre-structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 181 patients from skin departments in four hospitals of different cities of Bangladesh. In this study purposive sampling technique was followed. The study represents the distribution of the patients according to their age where highest no. of patient (72.92%) were in the age group of 19-45 years followed by <18 year age group (16.02%). The majority (67.95%) of the patients belonged to middle socioeconomic class with monthly income within Tk.10,000-40,000 BDT and observed that major portion (35.91%) of the patients completed their primary education. On the other hand, 16.57% patients studied up to H.S.C and 13.81% patients were Graduate. Majority (63.54%) of the patients were male and 36.46% of the patients were female and maximum (48.07%) patients identified bad hygiene as the risk factors of skin infection followed by wearing tight cloth (27.07%), lack of sleep (17.67%), drinking less water (10.49%) etc. During the study it was seen that 43.65% of patients had oily skin and 35.91% of patient had dry skin. On the other hand, only 11.60% had normal skin. The prevalence of skin disease among adults was found to be 72.92% with allergy, psoriasis & fungal infection being the most common. Among the population 71.27% of the patients were mostly suffered by skin disease during the summer season. Awareness of skin disease is under-researched in Bangladesh, and a deep understanding remains to be achieved. Thus, there is a need for further studies on community health education and treatment individualization for skin disease.