Results:
Overall, 631 patients with dermatological conditions were enrolled to the study. The patients aged from 6 months to 91 years (mean= 63.45, SD= 32.14) and the patients’ disease duration ranged from 8 months to 40 years (mean= 6.21, SD= 5.25). All of these patients with dermatological complaints were visited and diagnosed by one or more dermatologist before been referred to the TPM clinic. Table 1 demonstrates the epidemiological characteristics of the patients with dermatological conditions referred to TPM clinic were presented in Table 1.
The majority of skin patients referred to the TPM clinic (99.5%) were Iranian. The place of residence of the majority of skin patients referred to the TPM (77.8%) was Shiraz. The majority of patients (19.9%) referred to the traditional medicine clinic in May.
Table 2 demonstrates the primary dermatological complaints of patients referring to TPM clinic. The majority of primary skin complaints of the patients (27.6%) consisted of acne and the least for hirsutism and premature graying of hair (0.3%).
Based on our study, 148 out of 631 patients(23.5%) suffered from only dermatological complaints. However, 163 patients (25.8%) suffered from another comorbid complaint, in addition to their skin conditions and 320 patients (50.7%) suffered from two comorbid problems. In this setting, most patients (47.7%) had gastrointestinal problems in addition to their initial skin complaints. Table 2 describes the comorbidities documented in the patients in our study.
In the follow-up course of the patients under treatment with TPM, we could follow up 271 out of 631 patients. The result of following up these patients demonstrated that 124 (45.8%) of them had reported less than 30% improvement, 29 (10.7%) had announced 30%-60% improvement and 118 (43.5%) had experienced a recovery of more than 60%. In addition, there were no associations between the rate of improvement and the patients’ sex (p=0.430), level of education (p=0.853), place of residence (p=0.336), and the numbers of visiting the TPM physicians.