Abstract :
Background: The outbreak of a mysterious pneumonia, reported from a sea food wet market of Wuhan, Hubei, China in 2019 has now taken the shape of a pandemic with successive waves sweeping across nations and creating havoc. Moreover, the transmission speed is much more than earlier severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS) making it imperative for the use of protective gears like masks, gloves and personal protective equipment(PPE) kits but ironically they in itself lead to a range of cutaneous complications making it difficult to continuously wear them.
Aim: The purpose of this study was to assess the various adverse dermatological manifestation among general population in view of the various precautions taken against COVID-19.
Materials and Methods: This was a descriptive questionnaire based study and a total of 105 patients were taken up for the study who came to the dermatology outpatient department(opd) with dermatological manifestations following covid 19 protection measures who met the inclusion criterias . All those who didn’t give consent for the study were excluded from the study.
Results : A total of 105 questionnaires were collected. The males outnumbered the females with 71 males and 34 females. The most common reason implicated was wearing masks, goggles in 42(36.19%) patients followed by use of hand sanitizers and frequent hand washing seen in 36(12.4%) patients. In 20(19%) patients, use of gloves resulted in adverse dermatological manifestations followed by the use of PPE kits in 7(6.6%).
Conclusion: The prevalence of Covid -19 precaution taking measures is of utmost importance specially among the health care workers and office going people who have to adorn it for prolonged hours thus leading to adverse effects. Prompt diagnosis and this data can offer valuable insights to help modify the adverse effects.
Keyword :
Covid19, Pandemic, Protective gear, Adverse cutaneous effects