Dermatology Assessment
Use when asked to administer, score, or explain a Dermatology Assessment — quality-of-life evaluation using the DLQI plus lesion characterization — grounded in FormExamples/form-examples.
Dermatological quality of life evaluation using the DLQI (Dermatology Life Quality Index) with lesion characterization.
Scoring
Instrument: DLQI. Range 0–30.
- 0–1 — no effect on the patient's life.
- 2–5 — small effect.
- 6–10 — moderate effect.
- 11–20 — very large effect.
- 21–30 — extremely large effect.
What it covers
Demographics; chief complaint; the DLQI questionnaire; lesion characteristics; medical history; current medications; allergies; family history; and social history.
Common pitfalls
- Treating DLQI as a severity-of-disease measure — it measures quality-of-life impact, which doesn't always track linearly with clinical severity (a small but visible facial lesion can score higher impact than a larger but hidden one).
- Skipping lesion characterization in favor of the questionnaire alone — DLQI captures impact, not diagnosis; objective lesion description remains necessary for clinical assessment and monitoring over time.
- Not tracking DLQI longitudinally — a single DLQI score is less useful than a trend; repeat scoring at follow-up shows whether treatment is actually improving quality of life, not just lesion appearance.
Learn more
- FormExamples: dermatology-assessment for the full implementation, clinical references, and worked examples.
- Integumentary Assessment for a related skin/wound-focused assessment.