Guidelines on the Management of Psoriasis in South Africa

Abstract

Background
Psoriasis is a chronic, relapsing, immune-mediated, potentially devastating disease, influenced by genetic and environmental factors that can cause substantial morbidity and psychological stress and have a profound negative impact on patient quality of life.

Objective
The guidelines for the management of psoriasis have been developed in an attempt to improve the outcomes of treatment of this condition in South Africa. This condition has a major impact on the quality of life of sufferers and it is expected that these guidelines, if implemented, will play a role in achieving this improved outcome.

Scope
These guidelines were developed to address the diagnosis and treatment of psoriasis, with differing degrees of disease severity, in patients of all ages, by all health care professionals involved with their management.

Recommendations
All health care workers involved in the management of psoriasis should take note of these guidelines and try and implement them in clinical practice as far as possible. All treatment methods and procedures not substantiated by evidence from the literature should be discontinued and avoided to decrease the financial burden of psoriasis treatment.

Validation
These guidelines were developed through general consensus by a group of eight South African dermatologists (“The Panel”), sanctioned by the Dermatological Society of South Africa (DSSA), by the adaptation for the South African situation of the current guidelines used in the United States of America, Britain, Germany, Canada and Finland. Draft documents were made available for comment to the dermatology community as a whole, via the official web site of the DSSA and the guidelines were presented and discussed at the annual congress of the DSSA in 2008. All input from these sources, where appropriate, were then incorporated into these guidelines.

Guidelines sponsor
Schering-Plough initiated the project and sponsored the meetings of the work group and all costs generated by these meetings.

Plans for guideline revision
The field of biologicals and cytokine modulators is in a rapid phase of development and revision of the scope and content of these guidelines will be ongoing, as longer-term data emerges.