Incidence and epidemiology of onychomycosis in patients visiting a tertiary care hospital in India

Abstract

Onychomycosis is a chronic fungal infection of the nails that is largely underdiagnosed in developing countries such as India due to poor health care facilities. In this study, we evaluated the nails of 134 patients with a clinical suspicion of onychomycosis using direct microscopy and fungal culture techniques. The majority of participants (47.8%) were older than 40 years. On both direct microscopy and fungal culture, 71.6% of participants were confirmed with onychomycosis. Among the cases confirmed by laboratory testing, distal lateral subungual onychomycosis was the most common clinical pattern observed, followed by proximal subungual onychomycosis (PSO), candidal onychomycosis (CO), and white superficial onychomycosis (WSO). We concluded that laboratory examination is of great importance in the diagnosis and identification of the underlying pathogen in patients with onychomycosis as well as in the selection of a suitable antifungal agent for treatment.