is missing (Short communication)

ObjectivesNon-melanoma skin cancers (NMSC) include two main types: basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC). Generic Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) instruments revealed little to no HRQoL impairment in NMSC patients. Instead, the use of specific skin disease HRQoL tools contradicted those observations. For example, the Skin Cancer Index (SCI) was suggested as a validated instrument for the evaluation of the impact of skin cancers on HRQoL, and has already been validated in several languages, but not in Italian. The aim of this study is to testing some psychometric properties of the Italian version of the SCI questionnaire in a large sample of NMSC patients.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional, single-center, observational study. Firstly, different factor models proposed in the literature were compared and the model with the best fit was identified. Secondly, the psychometric properties of the SCI, convergent validity and reliability, were evaluated.ResultsThe sample was composed of 371 NMSC patients. The factor analysis revealed that a revised version of the original model had the best fit [χ2(df = 85) = 354.53, p < 0.001, RMSEA = 0.09, CFI = 0.98, TLI = 0.97, SRMR = 0.03]. The SCI had satisfactory internal consistency for all subscales (Emotional subscale: ordinal alpha = 0.95; Social subscale: ordinal alpha = 0.94; Appearance subscale: ordinal alpha = 0.94). The convergent validity with Skindex-17 psychosocial subscale was adequate for all the SCI subscales (Emotional Subscale: rho = −0.50; Social Subscale: rho = −0.54; Appearance subscale: rho = −0.44; Total Skin Cancer Index: rho = −0.56; and p < 0.001).ConclusionThe tested psychometric properties of the Italian version of the SCI may suggest that it is an appropriate tool to measure the HRQoL in NMSC patients, however, further studies are needed in order to confirm and tested other psychometric features of this tool.

Objective: Alexithymia is frequent in patients with some chronic dermatological conditions. The aim of the study was to measure the prevalence of alexithymia in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) using two different tools.Methods: Consecutive patients diagnosed with SSc were recruited at day hospital and hospitalization regimen. Alexithymia was measured using the self-administered questionnaire 20-item Toronto Alexithymia scale (TAS-20) and the semi-structured interview 24-item Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA).Results: The study sample consisted of 67 female patients, aged from 29 to 82 years. According to TAS-20, 22.4% of patients were alexithymic and 17.9% were borderline alexithymic. Also, in our sample mean TAS-20 value was 48.9 and TSIA mean value was 20.3. Spearman’s correlation coefficient between TAS-20 total score and TSIA total score was 0.603. A high correlation was observed between TAS total score and the “Affective Awareness” (AA) scale of the TSIA. TSIA total score significantly correlated with the “Difficulty describing feeling to others” (DDF) scale of the TAS-20. The highest correlation between scales of the two instruments was that between TAS-20 DDF and TSIA AA (r = 0.675).Conclusion: The prevalence of alexithymia in SSc patients was higher than in the general population, and similar to that of psoriasis patients. The measurements obtained using the TAS-20 and the TSIA were highly correlated. However, they also showed some diversities in the scales, indicating that they may measure different domains.