Impact of childhood atopic dermatitis on family: correlation with disease severity

Abstract

Background Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common skin disease that not only severely burdens patients but also their families and society. AD is a chronic inflammatory disease that is usually detected in childhood. Objectives We aim to evaluate the quality of life of parents of children with AD and to crosscheck it with the intensity of the disease. Patients and methods This is a cross-sectional study, where the data of parents of 100 children with AD were collected from the outpatient clinic of the Dermatology, Venereology, and Andrology Department, Assiut University Hospitals, from May 2017 to May 2019. Parents answered the validated Arabic version of the Dermatitis Family Impact (DFI) questionnaire. The disease severity was assessed using the SCORAD index. Results Families of children with severe dermatitis had quite high DFI scores (16.37±3.727) compared with the families of those with dermatitis of moderate intensity (12.10±3.356) and dermatitis of low intensity (8.50±0.707) (P<0.001). It was observed that the impact of dermatitis on families had a positive significant correlation with the degree of intensity of AD (P<0.001, r=0.658). The highest-scoring DFI domains were sleep time, followed by a feeling of tiredness, emotional stability, general life, household work, and expenditure. Conclusion AD directly affects the quality of life of patients’ parents, and the adverse effects on the quality of life are significantly correlated with the disease severity.