[Trends in occupational skin diseases in the Slovak Republic]

The authors present the onsets of occupational dermatoses abroad and in the Slovak Republic, organizational measures, the so-called consulting days of commissions which co-operate with medical centres of occupational hygiene. They analyse the principles of diagnosis, relevance of epicutaneous tests, criteria of professionality, claims service, judgement and compensations of admitted claims. They analyse the developmental trends of claimed occupational skin diseases and skin infections which occurred within 1973-1998 according to their individual inducers divided into 20 classes, as well as to number of claims. They review the order of inducers according to their significance: oil products, plastic materials, rubber and rubber chemicals. The 4th class includes "other chemicals" which are to be divided according to their individual chemical composition. The proportion of occupational skin diseases in relation to all occupational diseases has gradually decreased from 51.7% in 1973 to 16.3% in 1998, in absolute figures from 382 cases in 1973 decreased to 60 cases in 1998. The authors analyse the reasons of this decrease. (Tab. 4, Ref. 39.)