Future directions in dermatology quality of life measures.

Within the last few decades, outcomes research, and in particular quality of life (QoL) outcomes research, has become integrated into clinical and research practices. QoL outcomes are important to dermatology, because many diseases carry significant psychosocial burdens and morbidity from appearance and symptoms with few cases of mortality. In this article, the authors discuss the future directions in QoL. Important areas are the determination, clinical significance and interpretation of measured QoL values. Additionally, the development of proxies for preference-based QoL measures and modules for health status QoL measures are discussed.