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Occupational dermatitis in employed consecutively patch tested patients
Date Issued |
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2013-05-23 |
CD-ROM.
MATERIAL & METHODS: Between April 2006 and October 2008, 816 patients with dermatitis were patch tested. Demographic and clinical data on these patients were collected in accordance with the ESSCA ‘minimal data set’. In order to decrease data dispersion, according to similar work tasks and substances used in the process, the subjects were aggregated into nine bigger groups: builders, cooks and food processing workers, agricultural and forestry workers, textile workers and tailors, metal, machine-building and electronic industry workers, cleaners and laundry workers, cashiers and salespersons, health professionals, office clerks. All the remaining employed subjects were referred to as ‘other employees’. Patch testing was performed with the allergens of the European baseline series following to the guidelines of the International Contact Dermatitis Research Group. Positive reactions between ‘+’ and ‘+++’ at day 3 were considered positive. Occupational causation or aggravation of dermatitis was determined according to the criteria proposed by Mathias if 4 or more criteria were found [Mathias CG, 1989]. RESULTS: 535 (65.5%) patients were employed at the time of the study. The age of the employed subjects differed in the group of office clerks. Among them, employees under 40 years of age comprised 54.4% as compared to 38% among other employed subjects (P = 0.004). Men were more prevalent among builders, metal, machine-building and electronic industry workers, while women were more prevalent among health professionals, cashiers and salespersons, comparing with other employed patients, P < 0.05. Contact sensitization to at least one allergen was more frequent among agricultural and forestry workers, than other employees (65.2% versus 42.4%, P = 0.031). Analyzing contact sensitization to individual allergens, higher frequency of contact allergy to chromates was found among builders [...].