New Quality of Life Index and More for Psoriasis

Are you one of the roughly 700 patients with psoriasis at PatientsLikeMe?  We’ve got some exciting new features just for you.

A Sample Graph Produced by Taking the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI)

At the end of 2011, we unveiled the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI), a new 12-question survey that helps you measure how psoriasis affects your day-to-day life.   Answer the questions regularly to produce a graph (see above) showing how things are changing over time.  That way, you’ll be able to see how various treatments and interventions are impacting your quality of life.

Instructions on How to Measure Body Surface Area (BSA)

Another new feature is the Body Surface Area (BSA) lab test, which measures the percentage of your skin affected by psoriasis.  Not sure how to approximate that?  Your palm (including fingers) represents about 1% of your body surface area, so use that as a proxy.  How many palms would equal the area of your body affected by psoriasis?  If it’s 15 palms, for example, that would be equal to 15% of your body surface area.

The Profile Icon or "Nugget" for Psoriasis Patients

Finally, if you have listed psoriasis as your primary condition (and more than 350 of you have), you may have noticed that you have a brand new patient icon or “nugget.”  It displays your latest DLQI and BSA scores as well as your age, gender and latest InstantMe status (e.g. “Very good” in the example shown to the left).

So, what do you think of these new features?  Have you tried them out?  We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

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