ABSTRACT
I. Introduction 75
II. Materials and Methods 77
A. Epidemiological Study 77
B. Statistics 77
C. Clinical Study 78
D. Bacteriological Study 78
III. Results 79
A. Prevalence of Individual Risk Factors 79
B. Frequency of Current Hand Eczema 79
C. Predicted Risk of Current Hand Eczema 80
D. Severity of Current Hand Eczema 83
E. Clinical Study 84
F. Bacteriological Study 86
IV. Comments 86
A. Individual Factors 86
B. Environmental Factors 91
C. Colonization of S. aureus in Hand Eczema 92
V. Conclusions 92
References 93
I. INTRODUCTION
Hand eczema is a multifactorial disease. Individual and environmental factors interact in a complex manner in this common disorder. The knowledge of the relative importance of various endogenous and exogenous factors is very limited. Extending this knowledge is important to understand the nature of hand eczema. This chapter is a summary of a study on hospital workers entitled, “Individual and environmental risk factors for hand eczema in hospital workers”.1 The study consists of three parts: (1) epidemiological, designed to investigate the relative importance of some individual and environmental factors in the etiology of current hand eczema in newly employed hospital workes;2,3 (2) clinical, consisting of patients from the total cohort who consulted a dermatologist because of current hand eczema;4 these patients being studied especially with regards to the importance of irritants, allergens, and contact urticants in the etiology of the current hand eczema;
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and (3) bacteriological, in which the microflora in hand eczema and the effects of a potent topical steroid on the microflora were studied.5
