Results:
Overall, 631 patients with dermatological conditions were enrolled to
the study. The patients aged from 6 months to 91 years (mean= 63.45, SD=
32.14) and the patients’ disease duration ranged from 8 months to 40
years (mean= 6.21, SD=
5.25).
All of these patients with dermatological complaints were visited and
diagnosed by one or more dermatologist before been referred to the TPM
clinic. Table 1 demonstrates the epidemiological characteristics of the
patients with dermatological conditions referred to TPM clinic were
presented in Table 1.
The
majority of skin patients referred to the TPM clinic (99.5%) were
Iranian. The place of residence of the majority of skin patients
referred to the TPM (77.8%) was Shiraz. The majority of patients
(19.9%) referred to the traditional medicine clinic in May.
Table 2 demonstrates the primary dermatological complaints of patients
referring to TPM clinic. The majority of primary skin complaints of the
patients (27.6%) consisted of acne and the least for hirsutism and
premature graying of hair (0.3%).
Based on our study, 148 out of 631 patients(23.5%) suffered from only
dermatological complaints. However, 163 patients (25.8%) suffered from
another comorbid complaint, in addition to their skin conditions and 320
patients (50.7%) suffered from two comorbid problems. In this setting,
most patients (47.7%) had gastrointestinal problems in addition to
their initial skin complaints. Table 2 describes the comorbidities
documented in the patients in our study.
In the follow-up course of the patients under treatment with TPM, we
could follow up 271 out of 631 patients. The result of following up
these patients demonstrated that 124 (45.8%) of them had reported less
than 30% improvement, 29 (10.7%) had announced 30%-60% improvement
and 118 (43.5%) had experienced a recovery of more than 60%. In
addition, there were no associations between the rate of improvement and
the patients’ sex (p=0.430), level of education (p=0.853), place of
residence (p=0.336), and the numbers of visiting the TPM physicians.