Treatment Willingness and Importance of Skin Clearance for Patients With Chronic Hand Eczema

Abstract

Background: Chronic hand eczema (CHE) has a significant negative impact on quality of life and a high disease burden. Objective: To investigate the importance of skin clearance and daily time trade off (dTTO) in adult patients with CHE. Methods: Patients with CHE from the Danish Skin Cohort were sent a digital survey regarding demographics, lifestyle factors, CHE characteristics, importance of obtaining skin clearance, and dTTO. Results: Of 372 patients with current CHE, 58.1%, 26.3%, 11.0%, and 4.6% reported having mild, moderate, severe, and very severe CHE, respectively. Patients reported a median of 9 (interquartile range: [5–10], 9 [7–10], 10 [8–10] and 10 [9–10]) when asked about the importance of obtaining 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% skin clearance, respectively (numerical rating scale from 0 [lowest] to 10 [highest]). Importance of skin clearance increased with increasing CHE severity (p < 0.001). One in three patients (41.2%) with either severe or very severe CHE was willing to allocate > 1 h a day to treat their CHE. Conclusions: Skin clearance was important among CHE patients, and patients with more severe disease were willing to allocate a substantial amount of time every day to treat their CHE.