Objective: Dermatologic diseases have a considerable impact on patients social relationships, psychological status and daily activities. Recently, studies which assess this impact and also guide to therapies have popularity. It has been aimed to evaluate the effects of dermatologic diseases on quality of life of Turkish dermatology outpatients using Turkish dermatology quality of life instrument (TDQL) and to determine the link between demographic parameters and Turkish dermatology life quality index.
Methods: A total of randomly "ed 197 dermatology out patients (120 female, 77 male; and mean age was: 36.01) were included in this study. TDQL was applied to each patient. The relationship between patients sex, age, occupational status, category, duration, severity and extensity of disease with TDQL scores were investigated and were assessed statistically
Results: No significant distinctions were detected between the total TDQL scores of the patients and their sex, age or occupational status. However, there were differences between TDQL scores and category, duration and extensity of disease; the patients who had severe diseases had significantly higher scores (p:0.0001 rs:0.296). The first five diseases that affected the quality of life the most were psoriasis, acne, eczema, seborrheic dermatitis and pruritus.
Conclusion: Skin diseases significantly affect patients looks, social life and emotional situation. Our study results with TDLQ conform to those obtained by other quality of life measurements in different communities. Therefore, life style and discrepancy between everyday activities according to sociocultural characteristics, dont seem to be affect the results as much as expected.
Key words: Quality of life, questionnaire, skin disease, measurement of quality of life
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