Hospital and Geriatric Settings: A Comparison of Prevalence, Anatomical Locations, and Interventions

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Skin conditions and dermatological diseases (eg, intertrigo) in older patients are common in clinical practice. In addition to the negative impact on the patient’s health, diseases such as intertrigo place a financial burden on the health care system. PURPOSE: The purpose of this secondary data analysis was to compare the prevalence, anatomical locations, and applied interventions of intertrigo in patients in hospitals and geriatric institutions. METHODS: The authors report the outcome of a secondary data analysis of data collected from 2012 to 2016 from the Nursing Quality Measurement 2.0. This is an annually conducted cross-sectional multicenter study. Descriptive statistics and statistical tests were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: Of patients in the hospital, 2.4% (n = 15,152) had intertrigo compared with 3.4% (n = 3743) of patients in geriatric institutions. In general, expert consultation was the least used intervention for the treatment of intertrigo in hospitals (6.1%, n = 359) and geriatric institutions (9.8%, n = 122). CONCLUSION: Independent of the setting, considering the worldwide climate change, the authors expect that the number of patients with intertrigo will be increasing. Therefore, they highly recommend implementing standardized skin assessments for moisture-associated skin damage to identify intertrigo as early as possible. Moreover, as the consultation of experts was seldom used in both settings, advances in the interdisciplinary and interprofessional management of moisture-associated skin damages are needed.