Leprosy Mailing List – January 25th, 2007
Ref.: Solicit
of information on clinical scoring system for multibacillary (MB)
patients
From: Narasimha Rao P.,
Hyderabad, India
Dear Dr Salvatore,
I would like to request dear fellow members for
information on the "clinical scoring systems
available/applicable for multibacillary patients with multiple skin
lesions". These
would be useful to asses patient’s clinical improvement with
treatment. Many such
models/scoring systems are available for paucibacillary (PB) leprosy
with fewer lesions (*).
I sincerely solicit and appreciate your help in this
matter.
With best regards,
P. Narasimha Rao
*
The scoring system I refer to for assessing PB patient
improvement was used in:
2-3 lesion multicentre trial group. A comparative trial of
single dose chemotherapy in paucibacillary leprosy patient with 2-3
skin lesions. Indian J
Lepr. 2001;73:131-143.
Other workers also followed similar scoring: Deshmukh Ar,
Durat RS. Jerajani UR. Comparative clinical pathological study of
single dose ROM in PB leprosy patients with 1-3 skin lesions. Indian
J Lepr.2003; 75:209-217.
As the above scoring systems are based on
parameters such as hypo-pigmentation, erythema, infiltration,
hypoesthesia, in the skin lesions, plus presence or absence of
thickened nerve and these are good parameters to be applied in
PB patients. Whereas, they are difficult to apply to
assess improvement in MB patients with numerous patches all over the
body with vague hypoesthesia and almost no hypo-pigmentation
in the initial lesions and also at the end of the therapy. Hence I was looking/searching
the literature for a system which has already been tried in MB
patients for scoring their clinical improvement, before and after a
treatment regimen
