Effectiveness of a secondary prevention protocol for occupational contact dermatitis

Occupational skin diseases are often responsible for sick leave or job changes, affect mostly young subjects, are costly to society and have been reported as significant predictor of unemployment.

To assess, over time, the course of occupational hand dermatitis (OHD) after a specific training, by means of follow-up visits and TEWL measurement, to evaluate skin barrier integrity and if preventive measures for hand skin care provided may influence the course of the disease.

Workers with a diagnosis of OHD from January 2011 to December 2013 were contacted by telephone, filled in a questionnaire (NOSQ-2002) and were invited to a training course on prevention of skin dermatitis, and to a new clinical evaluation with TEWL measurement. Workers who joined the training programme were asked to undergo a new evaluation after 3 months. A total of 65 subjects without contact dermatitis were recruited as control group.

One hundred and one subjects from 143 workers, who were contacted, filled in the questionnaire. Sixty-five of them followed the training course and underwent a new clinical evaluation withTEWL measurements. Ongoing symptoms of subjects decreased from 60.0% to 42.3% 3 months after the training, and the subgroup which strictly adhered to the recommendations given achieved better results (61.9% of symptoms improvement when compared to 29.0% obtained in subjects with partial adhesion to the protocol). TEWL values changed from 21.3 ± 9.6 to 18.6 ± 7.2 g/m²/h (P = 0.001) on the hands and from 16.6 ± 9.0 to 10.5 ± 4.6 g/m²/h (P = 0.001) on the forearm, confirming the skin barrier improvement.

Our secondary prevention intervention was effective, leading to a reduction in clinical signs of dermatitis. TEWL measurement is a useful tool to evaluate skin integrity, mostly in apparently healthy skin, which may have a compromised barrier function, resulting in an exacerbation of the dermatitis.