Abstract

Background: The cure of onychomycosis (OM) requires long-term oral antifungal treatment, and recurrences after successful treatment are relatively common (10~53%).

Objective: We sought to determine the factors affecting the duration of treatment and identify risk factors for recurrence.

Methods: We retrospectively reviewed successfully treated consecutive cases of onychomycosis between January 2006 and February 2010. We classified the patients into 7 groups: distal subungual onychomycosis (DSO) type I (~25% involved), type II (25~50%), type III (50~75%), type IV (75~100%), proximal subungual onychomycosis (PSO), superficial white onychomycosis (SWO), and candidal OM. The patients were treated with systemic agents including terbinafine, fluconazole and itraconazole. We analyzed the clinical data for factors affecting the duration of treatement and recurrence of onychomycosis. The factors included age, sex, subtype of onychomycosis, type of systemic antifungal agent as well as the existence of comorbidities.

Results: A total of 227 patients were enrolled: their mean age was 56.9 years (range, 11~90); mean duration of treatment was 7.2 months (range, 1~24). The duration of treatment of DSO type I (6.2 months) was shorter than that of DSO III (8.5 months) and IV (9.0 months). The other factors including age, sex, the existence of diabetes or vascular disease, and the type of systemic agents did not affect the duration of treatment. The recurrence rates after successful treatment were 12.5% in the patients with diabetes and 2.6% in the patients without diabetes (p = 0.026). There was no difference in recurrence rates of the patients with or without vascular diseases.

Conclusion: The duration of treatment to cure OM increased with the degree of involvement of DSO. No other factors affected the treatment duration significantly. recurrence rate was significantly higher in patients with diabetes.

Keywords

Onychomycosis Prognosis Treatment

KJMM 2011 March;16(1):9-15(7). Epub 2016 February 18
Copyright © 2011 by Korean Journal of Medical Mycology

Language

Korean/English

Author

Jae Woo Choi; Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea
Hye Chan Jeon; Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea
Seung Hwan Paik; Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea
Jong Hee Lee; Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea; Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Soyun Cho; Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea; Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Corresponding

Soyun Cho, Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea. Tel: (02) 870-2385, Fax: (02) 870-3866, e-mail: sycho@snu.ac.kr

Publication history

Received 25 January 2011; Revised 11 March 2011; Accepted 11 March 2011.

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.

Jae Woo Choi

Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea

Hye Chan Jeon

Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea

Seung Hwan Paik

Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea

Jong Hee Lee

Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea; Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Soyun Cho

Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University Boramae Hospital, Seoul, Korea; Department of Dermatology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Since epub date 2016 February 18