P047 Dermatology Life Quality Index used as a standard in validation of 101 quality-of-life instruments: a systematic review

Abstract

Over the last 30 years many new quality-of-life measures have been described in dermatology; a critical aspect of their validation is demonstrating correlation with an instrument measuring a similar construct. The aim of this systematic review was to analyse peer-reviewed publications describing use of the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) in validation of other patient-reported outcome (PRO) and quality-of-life (QoL) measures. Seven databases were searched for papers published between January 1994 and December 2022 for articles containing data using DLQI in validation of other PRO or QoL measures. Methodology followed the PRISMA guidelines. The protocol was prospectively registered in PROSPERO. Of 1717 screened publications, 122 articles including 33 969 patients from 34 different countries with 38 diseases met the inclusion criteria. The DLQI was used in validation of 80 different dermatology-specific QoL measures, mostly disease specific, and of 21 generic measures. Of these studies, 42 were cross-cultural adaptations, 112 were single arm, 100 were cross-sectional, 18 were longitudinal and six were randomized controlled. DLQI was used for 14 known-group, 10 construct, 101 convergent, 10 concurrent, 10 divergent/discriminant and three criterion validity tests using the Mann–Whitney U-test (2), Spearman’s correlation (80), Pearson’s correlation (25) and Student’s t-test (1). The DLQI was used in responsiveness analysis in 13 studies. This review identified widespread use of DLQI in validation of other dermatology PRO and QoL measures, which confirms the central role DLQI plays in instrument development and validation across dermatology and beyond. The use of the DLQI by so many developers of other instruments has provided a common standard for comparability.