The impact of psoriasis, vitiligo, and eczema on quality of life

Abstract EN

The Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) is a new tool to measure the effects of skin diseases on physical discomfort and symptoms, psychological well-being, social functioning, self-care activities, performance at work or school, and on self-perception.

However, little is known about comparison of quality of life among different skin diseases.

The purpose of this study is to use DLQI for assessing the quality of life among patients with psoriasis, vitiligo, eczema and control group with different skin diseases.

Two hundreds and sixty eight patients were enrolled in this study, 124 (46.3 %) of them were males and-144 (53.7 %) were females, in which psoriasis constituted (55), vitiligo (49) and eczema (69) patients.

Controls consisted of (95) patients with other skin diseases.

All patients were recruited from Out Patients Department of Dermatology in Basrah General Hospital.

All were asked about the impact of their diseases on their life through the completion of the questionnaire form.

The results showed the mean scores of answer of questions for psoriasis, vitiligo and eczema were 13.94, 10.17 and 9.26 respectively, while the score for controls group was 4.19.This study confirmed that psoriasis, eczema and vitiligo have greater impact on quality of life than controls, also It was showing that the more frequent impact for psoriasis was 2.06 due to embarrassment, while for vitiligo 1.61 because of treatment and eczema 2.28 because of symptoms.

For controls it was 1.0 due to embarrassment.

The difference between number of diseases and overall mean scores was significant (P < 0.05).

In conclusion psoriasis has more impact on quality of life than vitiligo, eczema and controls.