Management Strategies of Acute Spontaneous Urticaria: a Tertiary Care Experience from Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Background: Acute spontaneous urticaria (ASU) is a common inflammatory skin condition that is encountered in emergency and primary healthcare. Around 20% of people experience an episode of ASU at some point in their lives.

Objective: This study aims to assess the knowledge and awareness of management of acute spontaneous urticaria among emergency and family medicine physicians of tertiary care center in Saudi Arabia.

Methods: A web-based survey, validated by expert consultants in the field, was used, which was followed by another validation by calculating the Cronbach's alpha for the data collected from the emergency medicine and family medicine staff for the period November, 2021 to January, 2022.

Results: In this study, 123 doctors responded to the survey. Approximately 83% of the doctors knew the morphology of urticaria and 79.7% knew the pathophysiological mediator of urticaria. More than 90% knew that blood tests are not required in the management of acute urticaria. While nearly 80% knew the mainstay of urticaria treatment (79.7%) and whether topical treatment is effective (80.5%), only 44.7% could correctly pinpoint how long urticarial lesions usually last before they are completely resolved.

Conclusion: Emergency medicine physicians were noted to be more adept in the management of acute spontaneous urticaria compared to family medicine physicians and general practitioners. No significant association was seen between physicians' knowledge and their response rate levels.