Abstract: |
Summary
Psoriasis can have a significant impact on patients’ life, depending on disease severity. Symptoms of psoriasis are not limited to physical impact; they can also have strong psychosocial effects resulting in impaired emotional state, daily activity and body image. Psoriasis has been shown to have an adverse impact on patients’ occupation, sexual functioning, social life and different leisure time activities.
The existing study was carried out using a descriptive design. It was conducted at dermatology outpatient clinic at Zagazig University hospitals with the participation of a purposive sample of 120 patients diagnosed with psoriasis. The data were collected by four tools; an interview questionnaire about socio-demographic and disease characteristic, Illness Cognition Questionnaire (ICQ), Self-administered Simplified Psoriasis Index-severity (saSPI-s) and Arabic version of Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI). A pilot study was done on 12 patients and the fieldwork extended from the beginning of September 2020 to the end of February 2021.
The study revealed the following findings:
Considering the demographic characteristics; the mean age of the studied psoriasis patients was 40.29 ± 16.67 years and 59.2% of them were males. Also, 73.3% of the patients were married and 65.0% came from rural areas. Regarding their educational level, 39.2% of them were university educated. As it is obvious, 58 % of the patients were working, and the main job was workers (63.8%). For 98.3% of the participants, the crowding index was less than two persons per room and the income of 61.2% of them had sufficient and saving. In addition, all of the patients were having all three utilities in their homes.
Referring to the level of illness cognition, about 76.7% of the studied psoriasis patients had low illness cognition.
Pertaining to the psoriasis severity, patients showed mild, moderate and sever psoriasis 51.7%, 40.8% and 7.5%, respectively.
According to the total DLQI, 18.3% of patients reported that their disease did not affect their life at all. Meanwhile, 28.3 % and 26.7 % of them reported that their disease moderately and severely affecting their life, respectively.
Patient's illness cognition had only positive correlation with the duration of the disease (r=.218). Meanwhile, psoriasis severity score had positive correlation with duration of the disease (r=.196), and a negative correlation with patient's commitment with treatment (r=-.258). On the other hand, DLQI scores had positive correlation with gender (r=.199), and a negative correlation with age (r=-.226) and commitment with treatment (r=-.229).
Multivariate analyses revealed that:
Patient's age, occupation, family income, commitment with treatment instruction, and number of treatment were statistically significant negative predictors of their illness cognition. Conversely, gender, residence, educational level and disease duration were positive ones.
Marital status was statistically significant independent negative predictor of psoriasis severity scores. On the other hand, duration of disease, number of treatment and illness cognition score were positive ones.
Patient's age was the only negative predictor of their DLQI scores. Conversely, illness cognition and psoriasis severity score were the positive predictors.
Conclusion & Recommendations:
The study results concluded that the majority of the studied psoriasis patients had low illness cognition. Also, psoriasis severity ranged mostly from mild to moderate with few severe cases. In addition, illness cognition and psoriasis severity significantly affected the daily life of the patients.
The study recommends health education to all newly diagnosed patients about the disease and the importance of treatment adherence with continuous updating follow up. As well as further research is needed for better understanding of the effect of various factors on the patient's daily life and replicate the study on a wider scale at other setting to permit for generalization of the findings.
|
|
|