A Study on the Assessment of Quality of Life in Vitiligo patients attending Vitiligo Clinic in Dermatology Outpatient Department

BACKGROUND: Vitiligo is a depigmentation disorder which causes the loss of colour of the skin in blotches. Even though the disease do not cause functional disability the psychological effects makes the patients to lead a compromised quality of life. METHODS: A Cross-Sectional study was undertaken on 100 Vitiligo patients attending Vitiligo clinic in Dermatology Outpatient Department, Institute of Dermatology, Madras Medical College & Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, Chennai. The quality of life of those patients was assessed using DLQI (Dermatology Life Quality Index), VASI (Vitiligo Area Severity Index) and VIDA (Vitiligo Disease Activity Score) RESULTS: The mean DLQI score was 7.39. Majority of the patients (45%) had DLQI score of 2-5, which interprets Vitiligo had small effect on patient’s life. Variables like increasing age, unmarried patients, unemployed patients, lower socioeconomic patients, patients with progressive type of vitiligo and longer duration of vitiligo (> 5 years) tend to show higher DLQI score which was statistically significant (p value< 0.05). CONCLUSION: Promotion of specific strategies like psychological assessment, prompt timely counselling and ensuring regular treatment is the need of the hour which might be a solution to prevent the patients from deteriorating into poor quality of life