CONFLICT OF INTEREST
None.
ETHICAL APPROVAL
Authors declare human ethics approval was not needed for this study.
To the editor,
We would like to share ideas and experience on the publication “The Impact of COVID‐19 Pandemic in Dermatology Outpatient Clinics in Turkey: A Survey Study. 1 ”
Ustaoglu concluded that “It is observed that the COVID‐19 pandemic had affected the working habits and conditions of the dermatologists, which might be considered for the designing of new working approaches. 1 ” The impact of COVID‐19 pandemic occurs worldwide, and the reducing number of patients visiting OPD might be due to several reasons. Some clinical centers might have policies to reduce number of patients or temporarily stop unnecessary service. In some European countries, the similar significant reduction in patients visiting cosmetic dermatology clinical during COVID‐19 outbreak is also reported.
In our setting in Indochina, the local public health policies are no operation of cosmetic dermatology clinic during outbreak. 2 Therefore, the total number of patient during COVID‐19 outbreak will be zero. The observation by Ustaoglu might be affected by local governmental policies. It is interesting to get the data on local policies in Turkey.
Basically, the reasons for the decrease in applications to dermatology outpatient clinics from a different country might be various. There may be different reasons for this decrease according to the countries. Patients generally do not want to apply to the hospital for non‐important cares during the pandemic period. For example, patients’ diagnoses in a dermatology outpatient clinic in a report from Turkey during pandemic significantly changed. 3 Acne and eczematous dermatitis significantly decreased. 3 Additionally, the intensive use of various teledermatology technologies by the patients and the positive response of the doctors may also be a factor affecting this. In a recent report from Turkey, number of patients evaluated with teledermatology methods increased during pandemic period. 4
Mungmunpuntipantip R, Wiwanitkit V. Impact of COVID‐19 pandemic in dermatology outpatient clinics. J Cosmet Dermatol. 2021;20:3758–3758. 10.1111/jocd.14427
Data Availability Statement
None.
REFERENCES
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Associated Data
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.
Data Availability Statement
None.