Psoriasis Area and Severity Index
Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) is the most widely used tool for the measurement of severity of psoriasis. PASI combines the assessment of the severity of lesions and the area affected into a single score in the range 0 (no disease) to 72 (maximal disease).[1]
Calculation
The body is divided into four sections (head (H) (10% of a person's skin); arms (A) (20%); trunk (T) (30%); legs (L) (40%)). Each of these areas is scored by itself, and then the four scores are combined into the final PASI. For each section, the percent of area of skin involved, is estimated and then transformed into a grade from 0 to 6:
- 0% of involved area, grade: 0
- < 10% of involved area, grade: 1
- 10-29% of involved area, grade: 2
- 30-49% of involved area, grade: 3
- 50-69% of involved area, grade: 4
- 70-89% of involved area, grade: 5
- 90-100% of involved area, grade: 6
Within each area, the severity is estimated by three clinical signs: erythema (redness), induration (thickness) and desquamation (scaling). Severity parameters are measured on a scale of 0 to 4, from none to maximum.
The sum of all three severity parameters is than calculated for each section of skin, multiplied by the area score for that area and multiplied by weight of respective section (0.1 for head, 0.2 for arms, 0.3 for body and 0.4 for legs).
Modifications
Objectivisation
Psoriatic area assessment and severity assessments were found to be non-reproducible. Several automated procedure for more reproducible measurement of psoriatic area were developed, but were not suitable for large-scale trials. A method where the advantage of accurate computerized measurement of the area on the digital photograph was combined with physician's proficiency in determination of the edge of psoriatic lesion was published recently.[2] The patients were examined and photographed before and after the therapy with calcipotriol ointment or placebo. The psoriatic area was manually outlined on the patient's photographs by physician and the area was automatically measured by a computer. For comparison, the physicians also made standard psoriatic area assessment. Computer-aided measurement of psoriatic lesion area was found to improve the power of the clinical trial, compared to the standard approach. The physician's estimations of the psoriatic lesion area tend to overestimate. The adapted PASI index, where the psoriatic area was not converted into an area grade, but was maintained as a continuous variable, also improved the power of the clinical trial. The modified PASI which involves computer-aided area measurement as a continuous variable is named Computer aided psoriasis continuous area and severity score cPcASI.
Simplification
PASI can be too unwieldy to use outside of trials, which has led to attempts to simplify the index (SPASI) for clinical use.[3]
Alternate approaches
While higher PASI scores indicate more severe psoriasis, it is difficult for patients or doctors to describe the clinical severity for any specific PASI number. Attempts have been made to address this problem by providing descriptions of psoriasis severity in evaluation systems, including the Psoriasis Global Assessment (PGA) and the Lattice-System Physician's Global Assessment (LS-PGA); a study compared and validated PASI, PGA, and LS-PGA.[4]
References
- ^ "Psoriasis Update -Skin & Aging". Retrieved 2007-07-28.
- ^ KREFT, Samo, KREFT, Marko, RESMAN, Aleksander, MARKO, Pij B., ZAJC-KREFT, Katarina. Computer-aided measurement of psoriatic lesion area in a multicenter clinical trial - Comparison to physician's estimations. J. dermatol. sci. (Amst.), 2006;44(1):21-7.
- ^ Louden BA, Pearce DJ, Lang W, Feldman SR (2004). "A Simplified Psoriasis Area Severity Index (SPASI) for rating psoriasis severity in clinic patients". Dermatol. Online J. 10 (2): 7. PMID 15530297.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Langley RG, Ellis CN: Evaluating psoriasis with Psoriasis Area and Severity Index, Psoriasis Global Assessment, and Lattice System Physician’s Global Assessment. J Am Acad Dermatol 2004;51:563-9.