4th July 2023

Background

Allergic skin disorders are very common in dermatology, and are important to understand as they have a huge global burden of disease. These conditions have a large impact on a patient’s quality of life and can affect the economy as they are a major cause of occupational disease.

The most common allergic skin disorders are allergic contact dermatitis and acute urticaria. Other differentials for allergic skin disorders include; angioedema, atopic dermatitis, drug hypersensitivity reactions and skin manifestation of food allergies. Urticaria and angioedema will be covered in the next section. Please refer to the dermatology topic ‘Inflammatory disorders’ where dermatitis (contact and atopic) will be covered in more detail.