Patient's self-evaluation of two education programs for age-related skin changes in the face: a prospective, randomized, controlled study.

Background: An interactive software program (HOYS) has been developed utilizing a database of digital images depicting various aspects and degrees of aging of exposed skin across seven geographic regions, representing a total of 35 facial and extrafacial subregions. A five-point photonumeric rating scale, which portrays age-related skin changes across five decades for each of these subregions, underpins this patient-based interactive self-assessment program. Based on the resulting outputs from this program, an individualized treatment prioritization list is generated for each region where significant differences between the patient's chronological and esthetic ages exist.