Abstract
Purpose: The diagnosis of food allergy has been gradually standardized with the spread of manuals and guidelines. However, there are still some occasions, where instructions of inappropriate food elimination worsen "quality of life" (QOL) of patients and guardians. We clarified the burden caused by the inappropriate instructions to patients and guardians to eliminate various foods.
Methods: We examined 30 patients who had eliminated a lot of foods including more than five items from the list of the main foods (eggs, milk, wheat, rice, soy beans, meat, fish etc) prior to the visit to our department, and whose elimination has been improved drastically after the consultation in our department.
Results: The number of eliminated foods has been declined tremendously from 12.0±2.8 (mean±SD) items to 5.0±2.3 items before and after the consultation.
The rate of elimination release was 100% for rice and beef, more than 80% for chicken and pork, more than 50% for soybeans and fish.
Based on the questionnaires, physical and mental burden imposed on the patients were removed from almost all the cases, and it turned out that not only "the number of eliminated foods", but also "severe elimination diet for breast-feeding mothers" and "strict rotation diet" were the main causes of the burden to the patients and guardians.
Discussion: By the food elimination based on appropriate diagnoses, various burdens of patients and guardians have been remarkably removed.
It is our hope that food allergy patients would maintain QOL with the standard diagnosis and the nutritious guidance based on minimal food elimination, even though they have to eliminate causative foods to avoid adverse reactions.
