Psoriasis management in actual clinical practice: a 6-year retrospective study of 845 patients.

BACKGROUND: Over the past years, with the availability of relatively well tolerated, very effective but expensive drugs, biologics, treatment of psoriasis has dramatically shifted from inpatient modalities to outpatient ones. Relatively little is known about true life practices regarding psoriasis treatment in our country.

AIMS: To assess the impact of introduction of conventional drugs and biological drugs on medical resource use of psoriasis patients.

STUDY DESIGN: A retrospective chart review was performed.

METHODS: Patients with the diagnosis of psoriasis who were seen in the period between 2010 and 2015 were included in the study. Data including hospital resource use (inpatient, outpatient, day ward) and treatment modalities were collected.

RESULTS: The study population comprised 845 patients with 1053 different treatment modalities. There was not any significant difference between number of in-hospital days and frequency of hospitalization between biological drugs and cyclosporine. There was significant (p < .05) decline in the length of hospitalization after the year 2012 in biological treatment group.

CONCLUSIONS: Treatment of MSP with classical drugs requires fairly similar medical resource expenditures as biologics.