A 5-year retrospective study on onychomycosis and its causative organisms in University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC)

ABSTRACT

Introduction Onychomyosis is a common infection of the nails, caused by dermatophytes, nondermatophyte moulds or yeasts. There are four main types of onychomycosis which include lateral and distal onychomycosis, proximal onychomycosis, superficial white and total dystrophic onychomycosis. We performed a retrospective analysis looking into the recent trends of onychomycosis in a University Hospital in Malaysia. Materials and methods Data was collected from all patients who had their nail clippings cultured for fungal infection from January 2004 to December 2008, and were analysed. Results There were 272 nail specimens in total. The majority of specimens were from adults (65.8%), followed by the elderly (23.9%) and children and adolescents made up 10.3%. The mean age of the study population was 49.9 ± 19SD years. Of the 189 specimens with positive fungal culture, 110 (40.4%) were non-dermatophyte moulds, followed by yeasts predominantly Candida species (17.6%), 3 (1.1%) were dermatophytes, and 28 (10.3%) were a mixed infection of dermatophytes, non-dermatophyte moulds and yeasts. Conclusion From this study, it was found that onychomycosis in our hospital from 2004 to 2008 were mainly caused by non-dermatophyte moulds. Treatment may be challenging as nondermatophyte onychomycosis are more resistant to treatment.