Dermatological manifestations in hemodialysis patients in Iran: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Dermatologic complications are common in patients with end-stage renal disease and also have a high diversity.

This meta-analysis reviews prevalence of dermatological manifestations among hemodialysis patients in Iran.

Using PubMed and NLM Gateway (for MEDLINE), Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), and SCOPUS as the main international electronic data sources, and Iran-Medex, Irandoc, and Scientific Information Database, as the main domestic databases with systematic search capability, we systematically searched surveys, papers, and reports on the prevalence of dermatological manifestations (until February 2016). Heterogeneity of reported prevalence's between studies was assessed using the Q test; overall prevalence of dermatological manifestations was estimated using random-effect meta-analysis model.

We found 1229 records; from them, a total of eight studies comprising 917 hemodialysis patients were included. In all of studies, skin discoloration, pruritus and xerosis have the highest prevalence. According to random-effect meta-analysis model, the pooled prevalence of skin discoloration, pruritus, ecchymosis, xerosis, and half-and-half nail in hemodialysis patients were 48.03% (95% CI: 45.09-51.01), 52.85% (95%CI: 49.23-56.47), 19.88 (95% CI: 17.57-22.19), 51.14% (95% CI: 48.25-54.02), and 18.50% (95% CI: 16.0-21.0), respectively.

his study shows that the prevalence of dermatological manifestations seems high among the hemodialysis patients in Iran, and skin discoloration, pruritus, and xerosis are more common.