Background: The fixed drug eruption is a common adverse drug reaction. Clear identification of the culprit drug is not always possible in the clinical setting, and oral rechallenge may induce new lesions or severe reactions.

Objectives- The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of patch testing in establishing anetiological diagnosis in fixed drug eruptions.

Method: 85 patients with clinical diagnoses of fixed drug eruption were submitted to patch test in a period of one year July 2015 to June  2016 Dermatology Department IGMC Shimla.

Results: Patch test on lesional site were applied in 55 patients and positive results were seen in 20(36.4%).  Non-lesional patch test were applied on upper back in 30 patients of mucosal FDE and all were negative. Most common drug implicated was tinidazole 6(30%) ,followed by ornidazole 4(20%) ,ciprofloxacin 3(15%), doxycycline 3(15%), paracetamol 2(10%), cotrimoxazole1(5%), cetirizine 1(5%).

Conclusion: Patch test can be employed for the etiological diagnosis of fixed drug eruption, being safe, simple, inexpensive and reasonably sensitive. In fixed drug eruption patch test should be done only on the lesional site. Patch test applied on non-lesional sites give negative results.

Keywords: Fixed drug eruption, Drug Patch test, Cutaneous adverse drug reaction.

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Dr Shikha Sharma

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