Topical treatment of psoriasis: questionnaire results on topical therapy accessibility and influence of body surface area on usage
2017
Background
Topical treatment of mild to moderate psoriasis is first-line treatment and exhibits varying degrees of success across patient groups. Key factors influencing treatment success are physician topical treatment choice (high efficacy, low adverse events) and strict patient adherence. Currently, no formalized, international consensus guidelines exist to direct optimal topical treatment, although many countries have national guidelines.
Objective
To describe and analyse cross-regional variations in the use and access of psoriasis topical therapies.
Methods
The study was conducted as an observational cross-sectional study. A survey was distributed to dermatologists from the International Psoriasis Council (IPC) to assess topical therapy accessibility in 26 countries and to understand how body surface area (BSA) categories guide clinical decisions on topical use.
Results
Variation in the availability of tars, topical retinoids, dithranol and balneotherapy was reported. The vast majority of respondents (100% and 88.4%) used topical therapy as first-line monotherapy in situations with BSA 10%, the number of respondents who prescribe topical therapy decreased considerably. In addition, combination therapy of a topical drug and a systemic drug was frequently reported when BSA measured >10%.
Conclusion
This physician survey provides new evidence on topical access and the influence of disease severity on topical usage in an effort to improve treatment strategies on a global level.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
18
References
12
Citations
NaN
KQI