Prevalence of self-medication for skin diseases: a systematic review

• Autor(a) principal: Corrêa-Fissmer,Mariane
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Mendonça,Mariana Gaspar, Martins,Anesio Henrique, Galato,Dayani
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Anais brasileiros de dermatologia (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0365-05962014000400625
• topic: Dermatology; Self medication; Skin diseases

Self-medication is the selection and use of drugs without medical prescription, to treat diseases or for symptomatic relief. This article is a systematic review on self-medication in skin diseases. A search was conducted on Virtual Health Library and PubMed databases using predetermined descriptors. Two researchers performed the article selection process independently, with the degree of inter-observer agreement measured by the kappa index. The prevalence of self-medication ranged from 6.0 to 45.0%. Topical corticosteroids were the most commonly used therapeutic strategies for self-medication, as found in the reviewed articles. This study revealed that published data on self-medication in dermatology are scarce, although the findings showed that it was a common practice.