Ke. Mckenna et Rs. Stern, THE OUTCOMES MOVEMENT AND NEW MEASURES OF THE SEVERITY OF PSORIASIS, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 34(3), 1996, pp. 534-538
Traditionally physicians have assessed the severity of psoriasis on th
e basis of involved surface area or other physical features. These mea
sures are not highly reliable and do not quantify the extent to which
the disease affects the patient, New approaches to health care assessm
ent have been developed, including evaluation of the outcome of medica
l care. This new direction in health care assessment has been describe
d as the ''outcomes movement.'' This emphasizes the assessment of pati
ents' outcomes with respect to quality of life and functional capacity
, rather than traditional techniques that rely on the results of physi
cal or laboratory examinations. New measures to assess treatment effec
tiveness will almost certainly be used to allocate health care resourc
es. We review the status of measures of psoriasis and the implications
of newer methods for assessing disease impact and outcomes of therapy
.