Abstract

Onychomycosis is a common nail disease caused by a fungal infection. Mycologically confirmed onychomycosis should be treated. This is based on disease-specific considerations; cosmetic and functional disability, lack of spontaneous remission, impairment of health and well-being in elderly patients and need to reduce contamination in public bathing places and interpersonal infection among family. Though severity of onchomycosis is variable, treatment schedule is same according to fingernail onychomycosis and toenail onychomycosis. Combined treatment should be considered in special conditions; severe onycholysis, lateral onychomycosis, dermatophytoma, longitudinal streaks of onychomycosis, fungal disease involving the lunula, thickened nail plate. Duration of treatment should adjust to the individual cases by its severity of infection and infected characteristics. Objective method should be used to evaluate regularly efficacy of antifungal agents. Long-term and careful follow-up is necessary to reduce relapse or reinfection.

Keywords

Onychomycosis Relapse Reinfection

KJMM 2001 December;6(4):213-218(6). Epub 2016 February 22
Copyright © 2001 by Korean Journal of Medical Mycology

Language

Korean/English

Author

Ki Hong Kim; Department of Dermatology, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Taegu, Korea

Corresponding

Ki Hong Kim, Department of Dermatology, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Taegu, Korea. Tel: (053) 620-3741, Fax: (053) 622-2216, e-mail: khkim@med.yu.ac.kr

Publication history

Acknowledgements

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Ki Hong Kim

Department of Dermatology, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Taegu, Korea

Since epub date 2016 February 22