Introduction
Rosacea is a chronic disease negatively impacting the patients’ quality of life and mental health. The Rosacea Quality of Life (RosaQoL) scale could be a useful tool to monitor patients while on therapy vs rosacea, as it measures the impact on quality of life and helps individualize treatment to meet the patients’ needs. RosaQoL is a validated scale that can be completed within a few minutes.
Materials and methods
The original scale was translated and back translated by 2 native translators, with input from an expert committee when necessary. This version was tested on 21 patients to ensure proper understanding. Psychometric characteristics and validity were determined using various measures (sensitivity and specificity via ROC curve and internal consistency via Cronbach’s alpha). The correlation between RosaQoL and SF-12 scales was assessed using Pearson correlation coefficients.
Results
A total of 531 participants responded to the scale (481 with rosacea and 50 controls). The scale demonstrated excellent sensitivity and specificity (ROC curve, 0.96; 95%CI, 0.92-0.99) and high internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha, 0.96). RosaQoL correlated with SF-12. A higher score on the RosaQoL scale was associated with worse quality of life in all dimensions of the SF-12 scale.
Conclusions
The Spanish version of the RosaQoL scale exhibits psychometric characteristics, which are similar to the original scale. Also, the RosaQoL scale is useful to assess the quality of life of patients with rosacea.