Investigators: Asha Bowen
External collaborators: Daniel Yeoh (Princess Margaret Hospital for Children), Aleisha Anderson (Princess Margaret Hospital for Children), Gavin Cleland (Western Australia Country Health Service Kimberley)
Skin disease has several serious complications including heart and kidney disease. Whilst there are safe and effective treatments for skin disease which can prevent these complications, improving outcomes is still a struggle.
We think that it is likely that part of this is that skin disease has become ‘normalised’ in places where it is most common; that is to say that health professionals may not necessarily diagnose and/or treat skin disease in patients unless specifically asked to. We hope to address this by first assessing how common skin disease and secondly to assess how well it has been recognised and treated in the past.
We conducted a prospective, cross-sectional study assessed the prevalence of impetigo, scabies, tinea and pediculosis in children aged 0 – 15 years admitted to Broome & Port Hedland Hospitals from October 2015 to January 2016. A retrospective chart review of admissions in November 2014 was performed.