A STUDY ON THE PATIENTS WITH SCABIES IN KOREA

This study was conducted to understand the status of scabies infection and its epidemic characteristics in the Korean hospitals. 43 hospitals (86.0%) received the reports of scabies infection with suspicious or definite diagnosis to infection control department, implicating continuous increases 14.6% (7/48), 20.8% (10/48), 35.7% (17/48), 44.1% (21/48), and 56.7% (27/48) in 2010 to 2013 and 35.7% (17/48) in 2014 up to April. 92.0% of the hospitals had the rules and guideline of scabies infection control, which seemed to be prepared by the recent certifications of medical institutions and establishment of rules in infection control departments. However, less than half of the hospitals 44.0% (22/50) prepared the screening system related to scabies during the admission processes of the patients, 56.7% of the patients had the typical symptoms related to scabies when they admitted with 47.0% of pruritus, requiring the system to prevent from the scabies epidemic beforehand