Disease Evaluation and Outcome Measures

Clinical outcome measures are important in both clinical and research settings. In daily clinical practices, valid and reliable outcome measures can classify disease or assess changes in disease over time. Outcome measures designed for clinical trials are needed to precisely characterize the effects of interventions. The use of measures consistently between trials can facilitate comparisons of treatments. There has been growth in the number of outcome measures for hidradenitis suppurativa, both in clinical and research settings. Measures can be clinician-reported, such as body surface area involvement or lesion number and type; or patient-reported, such as pain or quality of life, and each contribute important aspects of disease impact (Mason et al., 2019). There is an effort to reach an international consensus on a set of core outcomes measures for hidradenitis clinical trials. Ultimately, treatment will be advanced by more valid and reliable outcome measures that demonstrate the impact of treatments, enabling drug discovery and approval.