During the COVID-19 outbreak, prolonged use of masks resulted in skin barrier damage among healthcare workers and the general population.

This multicenter, prospective, cross-sectional study was performed to examine the prevalence and related risk factors of skin injuries during the COVID-19 pandemic.       

With the help of an online questionnaire, an assessment of skin barrier injury caused by wearing masks was carried out. Registration of data regarding characteristics of facial skin impairment, demographics, and information on masks was done.

For establishing correlation strength, odds ratios (OR) with 95% confidence intervals were utilized. With the aid of multivariate logistic regression, factors linked with skin barrier damage were examined.

Overall, 1,538 responses were retrieved from about 1,700 questionnaires (with a response rate of 90.47%), and 1,409 questionnaires were noted to be valid (with an effective response rate of 91.61%). The respondents consisted of 567 healthcare workers (40.24%) and 842 individuals from the general population (59.76%). The prevalence of skin injuries is shown in Table 1:

Type of mask used (OR 2.77), daily wearing time (OR 1.57), mask replacement cycle (OR 0.76), and history of chronic skin disease (OR 6.01) and were linked with injury to the skin barrier.

Among the general population and healthcare workers, an increased incidence of skin barrier impairment due to wearing a mask for a long time was found, and treatment and prevention were not adequate.