The prevalence of skin and venereal diseases among the geriatric patients attending in a tertiary care hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

Background: The prevalence of skin and venereal diseases among geriatric populations generally differ in different countries and within various regions of a country depending upon social, economic, racial & environmental factor. The morbidity in elderly associated with skin and venereal diseases makes them an important public health problem. Very scanty literature was found on this geriatric problem in our country which is either disease based, community based or specified population group based. Objective: To assess the dermatological & venereal complaints of the elderly attending a dermatology outpatient department in a tertiary care hospital. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed a total of 1303 geriatric patients who were 60 years and above and came to the OPD of dermatology & venereology department of Ibn Sina Medical College Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh, over a period of 3½ year from January, 2014 to June, 2017. Data were collected on special proforma and analyzed with appropriate method. Results: Among 1303 patients 676 (51.88%) were male and 627 (48.12%) were female and most of the patients belonged to the age group 60-69 year (73.6%), mean age being 66.8 ± 7.06 year. The most commonly presented skin complaints were eczematous dermatitis (42.6%), fungal infection (19.14%), generalized pruritus (5.06%), seborrheic dermatitis (5.06%), urticaria (4.75%) and viral infections (4.29%) respectively. Tinea corporis (29.3%) was the most common of fungal infections and herpes zoster (82.14%) was the most frequent of viral infections. Conclusion: Eczematous dermatitis was found to be the most common noninfectious disease and fungal infection was the most common infectious disease in all age groups and genders.