Recent trends in disease severity and quality of life instruments for patients with atopic dermatitis: A systematic review.
BACKGROUND
A significant number of instruments exist that are aimed at quantifying atopic dermatitis (AD) outcomes.


OBJECTIVE
We sought to assess recent trends in the use of disease severity and quality of life (QOL) outcome instruments in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted on patients with AD between July 2010 and July 2015.


METHODS
A total of 540 nonduplicate records were identified through searches of Scopus and Ovid MEDLINE. Included studies were RCTs conducted on humans with AD that were published in English between July 2010 and July 2015 and that reported the results of disease severity or QOL outcome measures.


RESULTS
All of the 135 included studies assessed disease severity. Only 45 studies assessed QOL. Sixty-two disease severity measures and 28 QOL scales were identified.


CONCLUSIONS
This study was limited by its timeframe of 5 years and by the exclusion of non-RCTs and gray literature.


CONCLUSIONS
Disease severity and QOL outcome measures are instrumental in evaluating AD treatment efficacy. The number of such tools used in RCTs on patients with AD continues to rise. Standardization of outcomes instruments is essential for comparability among studies and improved quality of evidence.
University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado.
Mary K
MK
Hill
University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, Colorado.
Azin
A
Kheirandish Pishkenari
University of North Dakota School of Medicine, Grand Forks, North Dakota.
Taylor L
TL
Braunberger
Department of Dermatology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California.
April W
AW
Armstrong
Department of Dermatology, University of Colorado Denver, Aurora, Colorado; Dermatology Service, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Eastern Colorado Health Care System, Denver, Colorado. Electronic address: cory.dunnick@ucdenver.edu.
Cory A
CA
Dunnick
D003876:Dermatitis, Atopic / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D011788:Quality of Life; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000379:methods; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012720:Severity of Illness Index