Publication:

Clinico-etiological study of erythroderma cases from tertiary care hospital, Chitradurga, Karnataka, India

Background Erythroderma is a cutaneous morphological reaction pattern of skin having many underlying causes and finding the etiology helps in the proper management of erythroderma cases.

Methods A cross sectional study was performed at the department of dermatology, Basaveshwara Medical College, Hospital and Research center, Chitradurga. Authors studied 30 consecutive cases of erythroderma from July 2017 to June 2019 with respect to the epidemiological, clinical and histological data. Clinico-histological correlation was analyzed for etiology of erythroderma.

Results The mean age of onset was 35.03 years with a male to female ratio of 3:2. In addition to erythrema and scaling that were present in all patinets, other co-existent features included were pruritus (43.3%), fever (23.3%), and edema (16.7%). Of the pre-existing dermatoses, psoriasis was the most common (36.6%) disease followed by eczema (26.7%), drug-induced erythroderma (16.7%), colloidan baby (3.3%), pityriasisrubrapilaris (3.3%) and in 13.3% of cases, etiology could not be ascertained. Clinico-histopathological correlation could be established in 73.3% of cases.

Conclusions In all erythroderma cases cutaneous features were identical irrespective of etiology. Detailed history, clinico-histopathological examination and other necessary haematological investigations helps to establish the etiology of erythroderma which helps in further management.