Interpretation of quality-of-life scores.

Patients' reports of their experience with illness are a key health outcome, but scores that measure these reports can be difficult to interpret. Skindex-29 measures skin-related quality of life reliably and validly. In this issue, Prinsen and colleagues compare patients' responses to "anchor" questions with their Skindex scores to derive clinically meaningful scores for the subscales of Skindex-29. The cutoff scores identify patients whose skin diseases severely affect their quality of life.