Current status of surgery in dermatology.

An article titled "Current issues in dermatologic office-based surgery" was published in the JAAD in October 1999 (volume 41, issue 4, pp. 624-634). The article was developed by the Joint American Academy of Dermatology/American Society for Dermatologic Surgery Liaison Committee. A number of subjects were addressed in the article including surgical training program requirements for dermatology residents and selected advances in dermatologic surgery that had been pioneered by dermatologists. The article concluded with sections on credentialing, privileging, and accreditation of office-based surgical facilities. Much has changed since 1999, including more stringent requirements for surgical training during dermatology residency, and the establishment of 57 accredited Procedural Dermatology Fellowship Training Programs. All of these changes have been overseen and approved by the Residency Review Committee for Dermatology and the Accreditation Committee for Graduate Medical Education. The fertile academic environment of academic training programs with interaction between established dermatologic surgeons and fellows, as well as the inquisitive nature of many of our colleagues, has led to the numerous major advances in dermatologic surgery, which are described herein.

A quality rating scale for aesthetic surgical procedures.

BACKGROUND: Cosmetic dermatologic procedures offer the promise of visible aesthetic enhancement with minimal risk. While in recent years the number of available procedures has proliferated, there are few objective methods for evaluating the relative quality of these procedures for particular indications or specific patients. OBJECTIVE: (A) To develop a simple, easy-to-use numerical rating scale to assess the quality of cosmetic surgical procedures on a range of parameters pertaining to clinical efficacy and patient satisfaction; (B) to statistically validate the discriminative value of this rating scale. METHODS: (A) Patient and physician interviews were performed to elicit a list of factors that may collectively characterize the clinical efficacy and patient tolerability of cosmetic dermatologic procedures. A 0-100 point rating scale was developed based on these factors, with the face-validity of this scale checked by a group of patients and physicians; (B) Statistical analysis of the questionnaire was performed by asking 15 expert cosmetic dermatologic surgeons to use it to rate 23 common cosmetic dermatologic procedures, and analyzing the results. RESULTS: (A) An easy-to-use scale was constructed to assess the quality of cosmetic dermatologic procedures by rating the associated cost, risk, time (procedure and recovery), discomfort, results, and longevity of benefit. A "physician adjustment factor" was used to further increase the relevance of this 0-100 point scale for specific patients; (B) Repeated-measures analysis of variations (ANOVAs) performed on the data from the survey of experts demonstrated that this scale can be used to discriminate between common dermatologic procedures. The differences in mean subscores and total scores among procedures grouped by anatomic site and target lesion-type were significant at the level of P < .05. LIMITATIONS: Patient preferences exogenous to the rating scale may increase or decrease the suitability of specific procedures. CONCLUSIONS: Common cosmetic dermatologic procedures are of uniformly high quality, as per expert ratings on a systematic measure. This quality rating scale appears statistically valid and robust, given that expert raters assigned similar ratings to the same procedures but mean ratings were different across procedures. In the future, this quality rating scale can be used to assess novel interventions, and to help dermatologic surgeons faced with patient concern to optimally select among alternative procedures for a given indication.