title: Interpretation of the skin cancer quality of life score: a validated quality of life questionnaire for non-melanoma skin cancer.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) instruments are used increasingly. In order to assign clinical meaning to HRQoL scores, the interpretation of instruments is essential but lagging in dermatology.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To establish a clinical interpretation of the Skin Cancer Quality of Life questionnaire (SCQoL), a newly validated HRQoL instrument for patients with non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC), using an anchor-based method, and to test the responsiveness.
  
  
  METHODS
  Receiver-operating characteristic analysis was used to propose clinically meaningful cut-off scores for SCQoL including 101 patients with NMSC.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The following bands were established: score 0-3 corresponds to no impairment, 4-6 corresponds to mild impairment, 7-10 to moderate impairment and 11-27 to severe impairment of HRQoL. Testing the responsiveness shows a moderate effect size and significantly lower scores only for the domain emotion and the global item.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Using proposed clinical cut-off scores for SCQoL may help clinicians in their decision-making, help monitoring clinical improvement and classify patients just as e.g. the Dermatology Life Quality Index can.
authors.affiliation: Department of Dermatology, Roskilde Hospital, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Roskilde, Denmark.
authors.forename: Gabrielle R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Vinding
authors.forename: Solveig
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Esmann
authors.forename: Anne B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Olesen
authors.forename: Lone B
authors.initials: LB
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.forename: Karl B
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Christensen
authors.forename: Gregor B E
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Jemec
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008545:Melanoma; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D012372:ROC Curve; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012878:Skin Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires