Clinical Study for the Photosensitive Disease / 대한피부과학회지

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Although dermatologists may encounter photosensitivity patients commonly, most dermatologists are not familiar with diseases manifesting photosensitivity and there is still no clinical study on photosensitivity disease in Korea. OBJECTIVE: We tried to investigate incidences and sorts of photosensitivity diseases with clinical informations. METHODS: We performed a retrospective clinical review of patients who had photosensitivity as a chief complaint in the department of dermatology, Gyeongsang National University hospital from 1991 to 2000. RESULTS: There were a variety of diverse photosensitive diseases in this clinical study. Drug-induced photosensitivity including phototoxicity and photoallergy were fairly common (19.7%), and causative drugs were various including antibiotics, diuretics and even medicinal herb. We could find co-occurrence of some diseases in photosensitivity patients (39.3%), most of which were chronic degenerative diseases. CONCLUSION: Further clinical studies will be needed to get additional and standardized information in Korea, and precise clinical work-ups would be necessary to differentiate variable spectrums of photosensitivity diseases we showed in this study.