A comparison of the different questionnaires used to measure health-related quality of life in patients with dermatological conditions.

Abstract

Linked Article: Szabó et al. Br J Dermatol 2022; 186:485-495. Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) and Skindex-16 are among the most commonly used questionnaires to measure health-related quality of life in patients with dermatological conditions. DLQI has an alternative version with different scoring named DLQI-R. In order to understand the differences in the three measures better we compared how accurately these questionnaires can measure health-related quality of life. We surveyed 618 patients with self-reported physician-diagnosed dermatological conditions in Hungary. The most common diagnoses were warts (23%), eczema (23%), onychomycosis (18%), acne (13%) and psoriasis (13%). The most interesting finding in the study was that 64% of patients that reported no problems with their health-related quality of life using DLQI or DLQI-R, reported problems using Skindex-16. The authors found that Skindex-16 and DLQI-R outperformed the DLQI in the majority of measurement properties. In patients with mild symptoms, DLQI and DLQI-R might not be able to capture small impairments in health-related quality of life, and therefore, Skindex-16 seems more suitable in this population. The results suggest that the higher number of response options and their 'frequency' format in the Skindex-16 questions seem more useful to report problems in patients' lives than the fewer 'severity' format categories of the DLQI (how often you experience problems versus how severe they are). This study helps physicians and researchers in deciding which questionnaire to use in daily practice and also for research purposes.