What Factors are Important to Patients when Assessing Treatment Response: An International Cross-sectional Survey.
This study investigated the perspective of international patients on individual symptoms of atopic dermatitis (eczema) in determining treatment response. A questionnaire was developed to evaluate the importance of symptoms from the patient's perspective. Patients were asked: "How important are these features in deciding whether or not a treatment is working?", and rated symptoms on a 5-point Likert scale. Patients were approached via Harmonising Outcome Measures for Eczema (HOME) collaborators and self-selected to take part in the on-line survey. Patients from 34 countries (n = 1,111) completed the survey; of these, 423 (38.3%) were parents of children with eczema. Nine items were rated as being "quite important" or "very important" by more than 80% of the respondents: itch, pain/soreness, skin feels hot or inflamed, bleeding, involvement of visible or sensitive body sites, cracks, sleep difficulties, amount of body affected, and weeping/oozing. These results may be of use in determining the face validity of scales from a cross-cultural patients' perspective.
Department of Dermatology, Lund University, Skåne University Hospital, SE-205 02 Malmö, Sweden. laura.von.kobyletzki@kau.se.
Laura B
LB
von Kobyletzki
Kim S
KS
Thomas
Jochen
J
Schmitt
Joanne R
JR
Chalmers
Stefanie
S
Deckert
Valeria
V
Aoki
Elke
E
Weisshaar
Jumoke Ahubelem
JA
Ojo
Åke
Å
Svensson
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003876:Dermatitis, Atopic / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D038622:Internationality; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires