Cutaneous disorders of patients affected with homozygous beta- thalassemia attending the thalassemia centre in Basrah Iraq

الملخص EN

Background: A lot of literatures have been written on various aspects of Beta-thalassemia but little information about the cutaneous manifestation of this disease.

Objectives: To provide information on the extent of the skin disorders among patients with betathalassemia.

Design: A cross sectional study.

Setting: Thalassemia centre in Basrah Governorate, southern of Iraq.

Methods: Among 380 patients with Beta thalassemia recorded in the thalassemia centre.

Only 195 patients were recruited in this study for skin, hair and nail examination.

Additional medical information were taken from their files.

Results: The main skin disorders that were noticed were as follows: About 64.1% of patient had dry skin; a bronzy skin colour was obvious (54.9%); hyper pigmentation was reported (48.7 %).Also, pityriasis alba was present (38.5%); freckling occurred in (31.3%) and diffuse hair loss was found in (25.6%).

Distribution of cases according to sex was not significant.

Other medical findings was also reported.

Conclusion: We concluded that skin disorders are common among patients with Beta-thalassemia.

To our knowledge, these to be the first published study reported in Bsrah /Iraq.