Journal of

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Background and Aim: Trichotillomania (hair pulling disorder) is a chronic disorder, characterized by frequent hair pulling leading to hair loss. This disorder despite having multiple physical, economic and social consequences, is less likely to be diagnosed and treated. In the present study, we investigated the efficacy of emotion regulation therapy (ERT) on symptom’s severity, anxiety, depression, stress and quality of life in individuals with trichotillomania.

Methods: Six patients were selected by available sampling method, and Massachusettes General Hospital (MGH-HPS) scale, Depression, Anxiety, Stress-DASS-21 scale, WHOQOL-26 Quality of Life questionnaire, and DERS Emotion Regulation questionnaire were used. Gross 8-session protocol (each session 90 minutes) was delivered on a weekly basis for each participant individually. Data were analyzed by visual analysis, percent of recovery, Freidman nonparametric test and Wilcoxon test.

Results: ERT lead to significant reduction in symptoms of hair pulling, depression, anxiety, stress, difficulty in regulating emotion and improved quality of life in patients with trichotillomania.

Conclusion: ERT significantly improves emotional problems and symptoms of hair pulling in the patients with trichotillomania. As a result, this treatment can be used as an effective treatment for this disorder.

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Background and Aim: Care of patients with skin diseases may lead to high financial costs and burden on health system for societies and family members. In this study, we decided to evaluate the costs of treatments of patients admitted in the dermatology ward of Afzalipour Hospital, Kerman.

Methods: This is a retrospective, cross-sectional study performed from 2011 to 2017 on patients admitted in the dermatologic ward of Afzalipour Hospital. Demographic features of patients, duration of admission, cost of treatment, number and type of prescribed drugs as well as the patients’ and insurance organizations’ shares of the cost were recorded.

Results: In this study, 940 patients were evaluated for six years. The mean age of the patients was 38.05±22.35 years and most of them were female. The mean duration of admission was 8.42±2.54 days. The insurance companies’ and patients’ shares of the fees were 93.8% and 6.2%, respectively. The highest costs belonged to prescribed drugs (37.9%) and hoteling (30.3%). The most common prescribed drugs were antihistamines (33.1%), topical steroids (27.7%) and systemic steroids (24.5%). The mean number of prescribed drugs in each admission was 6.30±4.02 (range
0-20). Patients suffering from Erythema and urticaria had the total highest costs of admission (81,360,000 Iran Rials).

Conclusion: In this study, the most frequent skin diseases were infectious and papulosquamous diseases. The highest and lowest cost of admission belonged to prescribed drugs and consultations, respectively. Also, the highest cost of admission belonged to patients with erythema and urticaria.

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Background and Aim: Importance of hand hygiene with the COVID-19 has been raised around the world from 2019. We aimed to determine the effect of hand skin health in menopausal women during the covid-19 pandemic.
 

Methods: It was a cross-sectional study which has conducted on 94 subjects those were referred to menopause clinic in Imam Khomeini Hospital in Ahvaz city during September to November 1999. The tools of this study were the Personal Characteristics Questionnaire and Hand and skin self-assessment tool (Appendix 3 of “WHO GUIDELINES ON HAND HYGIENE IN HEALTH CARE “). Data has entered and analyzed by using software SPSS version 22. The level of significance was considered as less than 0.05.
 

Results: The mean age of women participating in the study was 53.6. The average frequency of hand washing outdoors was 5.28 and 10.43 indoors. Most women (94.7%) had reported at least some degree of skin problem and reported that their hand skin problems increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 

Conclusion: Finding this study has shown that about 95% of women had felt at least one problem in their hands. During COVID-19 pandemic, hand washing with disinfectants were repeated more and more, furthers skin of the hands will be two times more damaged as compared to normal conditions, so the need to increase hand health training as part of general health, especially in older adults' women in advance.