A COMPARISON OF THE EFFICACY OF STEROID PATCH CONTAINING BETAMETHASONE17 ,21DIPROPIONATE TO TOPICAL BETAMETHASONE17 ,21DIPROPIONATE TO TREAT IN CHRONIC HAND ECZEMA

Abstract

Chronic hand eczema is a common inflammatory skin condition with a range of physical, social, and psychological effects on patients. Topical corticosteroids are recommended as a first line treatment as medical studies showed its beneficial and occlusive effect on chronic hand eczema. However, a few of the randomized clinical trials were investigated and none were performed transdermal patch containing steroid used to treat chronic hand eczema. This study aims to compare the efficacy of transdermal patch containing betamethasone17 ,21dipropionate and the topical betamethasone17 ,21dipropionate ointment to be treated in chronic hand eczema. The prospective randomized assessor-blind controlled trial was conducted with 56 patients, who had been diagnosed with mild to moderate chronic hand eczema. They were divided into two groups to be treated with steroid patches and topical corticosteroid by evaluating the result after two, four and eight weeks to determine the clinical severity by using Hand eczema severity index (HECSI) and Physician Global Assessment (PGA) score. The subjective assessment consisted of patient compliance, patient satisfaction, quality of life, and side effects. After 8-week study was done, none of statistically significant difference in HECSI and PGA score was found with P-value 0.314 and 0.394 respectively. Furthermore, statistical difference in quality of life and side effects were not discovered. However, the transdermal patch group showed better compliance than the topical corticosteroid ointment group with higher patient satisfaction. Critical adverse effects were not reported in both groups. The transdermal patch can effectively decrease clinical severity in the patients with chronic hand eczema. Therefore, it can be applied as one of the alternative treatments for improving treatment quality.

-