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Itch symptoms drive millions of US patients to clinicians each year
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An average of 7 million ambulatory care visits per year to US clinicians were for symptoms of itch, according to recent study results.
Eleni Linos, MD, DrPh, assistant professor of dermatology at University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues studied retrospective data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey of US office-based physicians from 1999-2009.
Eleni Linos
There were 77 million visits for itch in the US during the study period, with an average of 7 million visits per year (approximately 0.8% of all physician visits per year). In comparison, 1.8% of all physician visits per year were for symptoms of low back pain.
Women were more likely to visit for itch (65.7%) compared with patient visits not for itch (59%), with patients between 25 and 44 years old (25.1%) or at least 75 years old (15.6%) more likely to visit for itch compared with those not visiting for itch (21.6% and 13.2%, respectively). Patients were more likely to be black (12.3%) or Asian (7.6%) compared with patients not being treated for itch (9.8% and 4.0%, respectively).
Body locations with highest frequencies of itching were skin (63.4%), vagina (17.1%), ear (5.2%), scalp (4.8%), vulva (3.8%), anus (3.2%) and eyelid (1.9%). Contact dermatitis was the most common primary diagnosis (12.8%), followed by vaginitis and vulvovaginitis (6.4%).
Patients treated for itch were more likely to receive one new medication (37%) or at least two medications (31.1%) compared with those not treated for itch (21.9% and 13.8%, respectively).
“To our knowledge, this is the first nationally representative study of the frequency of itch in the United States,” the researchers concluded. “Visits to clinicians for itch represent a sizeable proportion of ambulatory care visits in the United States, and research on the epidemiology, treatments and causes of itch should be a priority.”
Disclosures: Mary-Margaret Chren, MD, serves as a consultant to Genentech Inc. and Timothy Berger, MD, serves as a consultant to Prescription Solutions.
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