A Statistical Survey of Nail Disease: Nail Clinic of the Yeouido Saint Mary's Hospital, 2000~2010

Eun, Young Sun; Lee, Young Bok; Park, Hyun Jeong; Cho, Baik Kee

Abstract

BACKGROUND
Nail diseases reflect systemic diseases or other dermatologic diseases and also have many kinds of primary diseases on the nail apparatus itself. Recently, the proportion of the nail disorder is steadily increasing among many dermatologic diseases. Although there have been many studies about nail disorders, there have been no studies on the long-term observation of nail disorder in Korea.
OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to analyze recent changes in the incidence of nail disorders and compare the incidence with previously reported data.
METHODS
We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 3,384 patients with nail disorders who visited Yeouido Saint Mary's Hospital during the last 11 years (2000~2010).
RESULTS
There were 1,504 patients with onycomycosis (44%) among 3,384 patients with nail disorders. Among 1,504 patients, 809 were male and 695 were female and the ratio of men to women was 1:0.86. There were 1,880 patients with various nail diseases except onychomycosis; infectious or inflammatory disease (10.1%), traumatic nail disorder (7.1%), nail involvement in dermatological disease (5.7%), pigmentary disorder (3.4%), nail tumor (3.3%), nail involvement in systemic disease (2.1%), medication-induced nail disorder (0.6%), congenital disease (0.3%), other nail disease (23.1%) including twenty-nail dystrophy (3.2%).
CONCLUSION
Most results were compatible with those of other previous studies, but the ratio of onycomycosis to total nail disorder was slightly decreased, and patients with drug induced nail disease, nail tumor and twenty-nail dystrophy increased slightly. Due to increasing average life expectancy and improvements in the quality of life, patients with nail disease that visit the hospital are increasing constantly. To correspond with this tendency, more concern, and prospective and large-scale study are necessary.