Table 5.

Consensus points on topical therapy in patients with glabrous tinea infections

Consensus point	Justification/comments
Topical therapy can be used as a standalone or an adjuvant therapy	Topical therapy attains high antifungal concentration at the site of infection
Antifungal preparation alone without any corticosteroid or antibacterial component should be used	Corticosteroid application can result in treatment failure and local adverse effects
Topical corticosteroid containing antifungal preparation should be avoided even for an inflammatory lesion	Topical antifungals with anti-inflammatory effect can be used
Keratolytics and Whitfield’s ointment can be used in the treatment of glabrous tinea	Should be avoided if there is local inflammation
Antifungal (with few exceptions) should be applied twice a day	Twice a day application is required to achieve good clinical response
Treatment may be continued for about 2 weeks after clinical resolution	Clinical cure may not correspond with mycological cure
Topical formulation could be chosen according to the site involved	There are advantages of certain preparations; Eg. lotions in hair-bearing area
There is no added advantage in the efficacy of various formulations like lotions and sprays over the creams	Most of these preparations have advantage of being user friendly but not of added efficacy
Various classes of topical antifungals currently available are nearly equipotent	Few studies on head-to-head comparison of topical antifungals are published, but still the evidence is not sufficient to consider one molecule is superior to the other
No role for use of combination of two topical antifungals	No studies to substantiate benefits of such a combination approach and it is not practiced routinely