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Rosamaria Corona, DSc MD

Arch Dermatol. 2002;138:1227.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Health-related QOL refers to how people are feeling about their health status, including their perception of aspects strictly related to illness—pain, fatigue, and disability—and more general aspects of individual functioning—physical, emotional, and social. Over the last 10 years, an increasing number of generic, population-specific, and disease-specific instruments have been developed to measure QOL, and the number of published articles reporting on this issue has grown exponentially.

We recommend that clinicians consider the effects of their treatments on patients' health-related QOL and look for information regarding these effects in clinical trials. Responsive, valid, and interpretable instruments measuring experiences of importance to most patients should increasingly help guide our clinical decisions.

This article by de Korte et al offers an excellent overview of the QOL questionnaires used in psoriasis research and suggests which ones should be preferred in future reseach. For an overview of the availability of health-related . . . [Full Text of this Article]