The primary objective of this study was to estimate the prevalence of cutaneous manifestations in COVID‐19 positive patients. Besides predominant respiratory and gastrointestinal manifestations, reports on cutaneous manifestations in COVID‐19 patients are being noted increasingly. Therefore, the researchers performed a study according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta‐analysis or PRISMA guidelines. A detailed literature search was done in PubMed and Embase from December 1, 2019, till May 1, 2020. Studies reporting cutaneous manifestations in COVID‐19 patients were included. Irrespective of data heterogeneity, a random-effects model with an inverse‐variance approach was used for pooling the prevalence using meta package in R version 3.6.2.

Out of 15,143 articles, the researchers and doctors selected 2086 items for a full‐text read—the selected forty‐three items for qualitative analysis. They added ten articles for meta‐analysis. The pooled prevalence of overall cutaneous lesions was 5.69. The pooled prevalence of other outcome parameters was as follows: viral exanthem‐like presentation 4.15, maculopapular rash 3.81, vesiculobullous lesions 1.67. The estimated prevalence of cutaneous manifestations in COVID‐19 was 5.69%. Other indications were urticaria, chilblain‐like lesions, livedo reticularis, and finger/toe gangrene. Although it is premature to conclude the prevalence of the cutaneous manifestations during this ongoing pandemic, our report may be a stimulating factor for the physicians to perform further vigilant streamlined reporting of cutaneous manifestations in COVID‐19 patients to estimate the final prevalence.

Ref: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijd.15154

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