Prevalence of Self-Reported Hand Eczema Signs among Healthcare Workers after the Third Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey in a Northern Italy Hospital.

Proper hand hygiene is one of the enhanced preventive measures immediately proposed to avoid the spreading of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2, also known as COVID-19. The objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of self-reported hand eczema signs and symptoms among healthcare workers in a Northern Italy University Hospital after the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional study was conducted in June 2021. The hospital workers were invited to complete an online questionnaire through a link sent via institutional e-mail to both health personnel and support staff. Eight-hundred and sixty-three subjects completed the questionnaire; 51.1% of them self-reported suffering from at least one hand skin lesion. One-hundred thirty-seven responders declared that they changed their hand hygiene habits, and 88.9% of them carried out these modifications both in occupational and domestic environments. In detail, a change in terms of daily hand washing frequency is reported as follows: before the COVID-19 pandemic, only 27.8% and 10.1% of responders washed their hands 10-20 and 20+ times per day, respectively, while after the pandemic, the percentage increased to 37.8% and 45.8%, respectively. When comparing the health care workers with the administrative staff, we observed a statistically significative difference ( = 0.0001) in the daily hand washing frequency among the two groups, with a higher value in health care personnel. Accordingly, a higher prevalence of hand eczema signs (52.8% versus 45.6%) was detected in the healthcare group. We underline the potential role of the pandemic in the spread of hand eczema as an occupational disease and the need to implement its prevention.