Contact dermatitis, of which you can have an irritant contact dermatitis, which means some sort of chemical or outside source that causes an itchy, red, and scaly rash on the skin that would affect everyone because of its irritant nature, versus an allergic contact dermatitis, which is something that you are sensitized to. An allergic contact dermatitis is something that we see fairly often. It will present with red, itchy, scaly rashes, and a very well demarcated pattern which is based on the contact that you have. And some common sources are nickel and some metals that are found in things that we wear, black dye, or paraphenylenediamine which is found in some of the over-the-counter black dyes, or even henna tattoos that people like to get. We often see allergic contact dermatitis from formaldehyde, which is a preservative that’s found in a lot of over-the-counter cosmetic products and a lot of visual eye-drops.
So when you have contact dermatitis, no matter what the cause is, the most important thing is to try and remove the cause. If you remove what’s causing it, the dermatitis will go away on its own. But ultimately you’ll end up here because it is uncomfortable with the itching and the scratching. And we’ll typically give you topical corticosteroid creams to calm it down.
