Pattern of skin diseases in children attending the dermatology clinic in Alert referral hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: a retrospective study

Background: A Skin disease, which is estimated to affect between 21 and 87% of children, are the reason for up to a third of outpatient visits to pediatricians and dermatologists. It can possibly re-sult in considerable anxiety, parental worry, and embarrassment to the child and lead to loss of confidence, disruption of social relations, and feeling of stigmatization. This study aimed to assess the pattern of skin diseases in children attending at ALERT referral hospital.Methods: The study setting is ALERT referral hospital, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A hospital-based, retrospective, cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out between July and August 2020. All children younger than 12 years, who were diagnosed for skin diseases from May 2018 to May 2020, were included. Four hundred twenty-three children were sampled using a random sampling method. SPSS Version 20 software was used for data analysis.Results: The results showed that 385(91%) of patients had one skin disease and the remaining 38(9%) had two or more skin diseases. Fungal infections were present in30.1% of the cases fol-lowed by eczema, which accounted for 27.4%. Among fungal infections, Tinea Capitis (106/116), 91.4% followed by Tinea Corporis and Tinea Pedis were the most common in ALERT dermatology clinic. Among eczema cases, family atopic dermatitis (82/106), 77% was the most common. The result showed seasonal variation in some diseases.Conclusion: Skin fungal infections were the most common followed by eczema, pigmentary dis-order, infestation, viral infection, urticaria, bacterial infection, and others. There was some sea-sonal variation in some diseases.