Background: Hand eczema is a common condition encountered in dermatology. It is caused due to various endogenous and exogenous factors. Various morphological forms of hand eczema have been described. Patch testing is the standard method to identify the allergen responsible for the eczema.

Aims: To find out the proportion of patch test positivity in hand eczema patients and to find out the most common allergen in hand eczema. The secondary objective was to study the morphological pattern of hand eczema.

Materials & Methods: This was a cross-sectional study involving 56 hand eczema patients conducted between January 2016 and December 2016, at a tertiary care centre in Southern India. After a detailed history including history of occupational exposure and detailed examination, patch test was done on these patients with Indian standard series. The patches were removed after 48 hours. Another reading was taken after 96 hours. The readings were interpreted according to International Contact Dermatitis Research Group criteria and noted down. The data collected were analysed in terms of descriptive statistics.

Results: Majority of the patients belonged to the group of housewives (28.6%) and masons (23.2%). Most of the patients had a non-specific morphological pattern of hand eczema (66.1%) followed by wear and tear dermatitis (16.1%). Patch test positivity was seen in 60.7% of the patients and the most common allergen was potassium dichromate (20.8%) followed by nickel sulphate (17%) and thiuram mix (15.1%). A high degree of clinical correlation could be made out between the allergens positive and allergen suspected (82.3%).

Conclusions: Hand eczema most commonly involved housewives and masons. Patch testing helped in finding out the suspected allergens in majority of the patients thereby enabling a holistic management of the patients with hand eczema.

Keywords: hand eczema, contact dermatitis, patch test.

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Reena Chandran

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