The burden of cutaneous fungal infections in a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan.

Objective: In Pakistan, the real extent of fungal infection is unknown. Our objective was to estimate the burden of major fungal diseases here to emphasize their public health importance.

Methods: In this retrospective study, the medical records (January 2019 - December 2019) of 863 patients diagnosed with superficial fungal infection (SFI) were reviewed at the dermatology department of Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) Karachi. Stata 17.0 was used to analyze the data. Chi-squared test or Fisher's exact test was used to evaluate association between variables. Descriptive analyses include means, frequencies, standard deviations, and percentage tests whereas Poisson regression with robust standard error was used to examine the association of age, gender, diabetes, and type of SFI with recurrence of SFI.

Results: In this study, the most common SFI was tinea cruris (234/863, 27.1%) in men (n=62, 21.7%) and females (n=172, 29.8%) followed by pityriasis versicolor (n=77, 26.9%) in males and tinea corporis (n=115, 19.9%) in females. Tinea cruris recurrence rates were similar between males and females (34/234, 14.5%).

Conclusion: These findings show that fungal infections are a public health problem in Pakistan and that additional research is needed to assess their frequency in the general population. Clinicians must be taught and made aware of these infections to enhance diagnosis and treatment.