Detailed information on QoL in patients with vitiligo may lead dermatologists to pay particular attention to patient categories at risk for a high QoL impairment.

Background: Dermatologists see patients with oral mucosal conditions. Objectives: To evaluate oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) and the burden of disease of dermatological patients with oral mucosal diseases. Methods: All consecutive patients (April 2005 to November 2006) coming to the oral health care unit of the IDI-IRCCS in Rome were asked to complete oral health-specific (14-item Oral Health Impact Profile, OHIP-14), generic health status (12-item Short Form of Medical Outcome Study, SF-12) and general psychological (12-item General Health Questionnaire, GHQ-12) questionnaires. Physicians and patients gave a global assessment of severity of disease on a 5-point scale. Results: 206 patients participated. Recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) had the highest impact on OHRQoL. Women had poorer OHRQoL both on physical and mental scales of the SF-12. 33.7% of patients were GHQ-positive with women showing a much higher prevalence than men (39.7 vs. 20.3%). OHIP-14 high scores were observed in RAS, followed by oral lichen planus and burning mouth syndrome. Patients whose condition was ‘underestimated’ by the physicians had the worst OHRQoL and psychological status. Conclusions: Administration of specific and generic questionnaires provides a detailed picture of the impact of oral diseases on patients, which adds information that may be useful in clinical practice. The possible contribution of such tools should be assessed in a randomized controlled trial.

Simple and reliable tools for identifying patients at high risk for melanoma with preventive measures have important public health implications. An individual risk score for cutaneous melanoma was constructed and externally validated. With the summary coefficients of the risk factors for cutaneous melanoma, derived from a meta-analysis, a melanoma risk score was tested in an Italian population and externally validated in a Brazilian population. Common nevi, skin and hair color, freckles, and sunburns in childhood were the variables included in the final predictive model. The discriminatory ability of the models was assessed by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The performance of the model was also evaluated by conducting an external validation. The area under the curve (AUC) of the candidate model was 0.79 (95% confidence interval: 0.75-0.82). The same model, when applied in the Brazilian population, presented an AUC of 0.79 (95% confidence interval: 0.70-0.86). At the cut-off level of 3 and more, 89 and 80% of the melanoma cases were correctly classified as 'at risk for melanoma' in the Italian and in the Brazilian populations, respectively. The risk model is a simple tool that identifies patients for preventive measures and may be used with reasonable confidence in different populations. The risk model may help family doctors in referring patients to dermatological clinics and thus improve early diagnosis.

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