Measuring Quality of Life in Hidradenitis Suppurativa: Development and Validation of a Disease-specific Patient-reported Outcome Measure for Practice and Research.

Hidradenitis suppurativa is a chronic disease that disrupts patients' physical and psychological well-being. A disease-specific measure was developed and validated for assessing health-related quality of life in hidradenitis suppurativa. After qualitative item development, the quality of life in hidradenitis suppurativa instrument was tested in 101 patients, applying convergent measures and a usability questionnaire.

Multi-scale analysis of habitat fragmentation on small-mammal abundance and tick-borne pathogen infection prevalence in Essex County, MA.

Habitat fragmentation and heterogeneity transform otherwise contiguous tracks of forest into smaller patches in the northeastern U.S. and likely impact abundances, movement patterns, and disease transmission pathways for small-mammal communities at multiple scales.

Assessment of stigma related to visible skin diseases: a systematic review and evaluation of patient-reported outcome measures.

Misconceptions about visible skin diseases are widespread, and patients often face discrimination and stigmatization due to their condition. The associated negative health and psychosocial consequences of stigmatization in skin diseases have prompted an increase in research activity in recent times, resulting in a wide variety of assessment measures. This study aimed at aggregating and evaluating evidence of psychometric properties and methodological quality of published measures to assess stigma in visible skin diseases.

Measurement Properties of Patient-Reported Outcome Measures for Pruritus: An Updated Systematic Review.

This systematic review aims to provide an update on measurement properties of patient-reported outcome measures for pruritus. A Medline literature search was conducted to update the systematic review published in this journal in 2017 and to identify new validation studies published between October 2015 and July 2019. The methodological quality of validation studies was assessed on the basis of the COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health status Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) checklist, and the measurement properties of patient-reported outcome measures were evaluated.

Determining the Minimal Important Difference for the Wound-QoL Questionnaire.

Background: The questionnaire for the quality of life with chronic wounds (Wound-QoL) is a valid and reliable instrument to determine the disease-specific health-related QoL of patients with chronic wounds. For the interpretation of HRQoL scores, it is additionally important to know which differences in scores are considered meaningful. The minimal important difference (MID) is defined as a change in HRQoL that a patient would consider meaningful, such that the patient would judge a treatment to be beneficial and worthy of repeating.