Prevalence of Scabies and Impetigo in Patients of Different Age Groups in a Tertiary Level Hospital

Background:Scabies and impetigo are found as two common skin diseases in developing countries. Scabies affects the whole family and has more impact on children and elderly people. The present study aims to provide an update on the prevalence and severity of scabies and impetigo in individual of different ages visited a tertiary level hospital. Methods: This observational cross sectional study includes a total of 3680 subjects complaining the clinical symptoms of scabies and impetigo. The patients were selected randomly and examined in outpatient department of Sylhet Women’s Medical Hospital during the period January, 2019 to October, 2020. Results:Scabies and impetigo were observed in 65.76% (n=2420) and 34.23% (n=1260) patients, respectively. However, the majority of scabies patients (65.74%, n=1591) were associated with impetigo. Both diseases were prevalent in males (57.02% in scabies and 57.14% in impetigo) compared to females (42.98% in scabies and 42.86% in impetigo). The highest prevalence of scabies (33.63%, n=814) and impetigo (40.88%, n=515) was observed among the individual aged 1-10 years. However, prevalence of the both diseases decreased gradually with the increase of age from 11-20 years to 51-60 years and above. Scabies lesions were more prevalent in upper extremities in patients aged 10-30 years and above. However, lower extremities in patients aged 10 years were found as the more prevalent sites for scabies lesions. On the other hand, impetigo lesions were the most prevalent in lower extremities followed by upper extremities in patients of all age groups. Although scabies and impetigo lesions were mostly mild (>50%) to moderate (~20-35%), lesions were severe in 15.58% of scabies patients aged 10-30 years and 22.89% of impetigo patients aged 10 years. Conclusions: Results reported herein supports the notion that scabies and impetigo are prevalent in school going children.