Dermatologic conditions can be embarrassing and stressful for those affected. Skin diseases can affect the way people see themselves, as well as how they project themselves in society. Emory dermatologist, Suephy Chen, MD, associate professor in dermatology, has developed three instruments that measure how a patient’s quality of life is affected by particular skin diseases. The three instruments, ItchyQoL™, RosaQoL™, and Scalpdex™, are surveys that assess how chronic itch, rosacea, and scalp psoriasis and seborrhoeic dermatitis, respectively, impact a patient’s quality of life.
Rosacea and psoriasis are both chronic skin diseases. Rosacea typically involves recurring redness on the cheeks, nose, chin, or forehead. Psoriasis occurs when the immune system sends out faulty signals that speed up the growth cycle of skin cells typically causing raised, red patches on the skin that are covered with a silvery white buildup of dead skin cells.
While there are treatments to control and reverse symptoms for rosacea and psoriasis, there are no cures. The symptoms that accompany these ongoing conditions can impact a patient’s day-to-day activities, affecting a patient’s quality of life, or QoL. Chen says instruments that measure QoL are important in treating a disease.
Health services research investigates how patients are impacted by healthcare in the real world. After completing a health services research fellowship at Stanford working in cardiology, in 2000, Chen joined Emory and applied the methods she had learned to dermatology. “When I got into the field, there was hardly anything out there,” Chen says. “I was forced to make my own tools.”
Using patient-derived items, the ItchyQoL™, RosaQoL™, and Scalpdex™ evaluate patients on disease-specific issues such as embarrassment, physical pain, and social stressors. These results, in turn, are quantified into scores that can be used in a research setting or in patient care. “If you can distill it down to a number that has meaning, then that’s incredibly powerful when you want to know whether somebody’s improving or not,” says Chen.
Chen says the instruments have generated interest from pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions; the surveys can be used to measure the effectiveness of a particular drug, or to examine similarities and differences across populations. The instruments are also being translated into other languages to be used in global studies.
Adapted from a previous feature, the original is available on this web page.