Resident’s Page Scoring systems in dermatology

Dermatologists have the privilege of examining the largest organ of the body. However, unlike other organs, there are hardly any tests of clinical significance that measure skin function. In dermatological practice, methods of evaluating the severity of skin diseases are often crude, subjective and not reproducible, which creates discrepancy in results and inter-individual variations. Hence, to maintain objectivity in observations, scores are used to evaluate the severity of skin diseases. This is particularly important for monitoring the response to therapy and for evaluating the efficacy of new drugs. Over the years scoring systems have been developed for a number of skin diseases. This has greatly helped the cause of clinical practice and clinical research.