2Ankara Atatürk Eğitim ve Araştırma Hastanesi Geriatri Polikliniği ANKARA Introduction: Due to the increase in the elderly population, age-related skin diseases have also increased in our country. The aim of this study was to present the epidemiological data on skin diseases by performing complete dermatological examination on volunteers aged 65 years or over, who admitted to the geriatrics clinic of our hospital.
Materials and Method: After complete dermatological examination, the data of patients presented between March 2009-May 2009 were recorded according to age, gender, and accompanying diseases.
Results: Among a total of 200 patients, 98 were male (49%) and 102 were female (51%). Mean age was 73.9±6 years. The diseases were classified under 8 main groups. When analysed in decreasing order of incidence, the first three groups were, skin tumors (79.5%), infectious dermatoses (72%) and xerosis (41%). Only xerosis was found to be significantly increased in the eldest elderly and women (p<0.05).
Conclusion: In this study, the incidence of skin diseases in elderly patients were found different from that found in the previous studies. The main reason for this was anticipated to be the retrospective examination of patients admitted to dermatology outpatient clinics in the previous studies. Moreover, in the setting of a dermatology outpatient clinic, complete dermatological examination of each patient may have not been performed and recorded, which may have resulted in overlooking asymptomatic diseases. In conclusion, complete dermatological examination in patients aged 65 or over is very important for detecting premalign asymptomatic skin diseases such as actinic keratosis.
Keywords : Aging; Skin Diseases/pathology; Dermatology