Patient-Reported Outcome Measures for Facial Plastic Surgery

In facial plastic surgery, we have finally begun to join our colleagues in other specialties by raising the bar from an era in which outcomes were based purely on nonquantitative, subjective measures to more quantitative, evidence-based outcome studies. One reason for this is that quality-of-life (QoL) outcomes are becoming important to health care payers, policymakers, patients, and clinicians alike. Quality-of-life measures can be used by payers to index the utility (ie, cost-effectiveness) of given interventions. Determination of the global effects of a given disease and/or intervention on a patient's QoL can be measured with questionnaires termed patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs). Measurement of QoL can be separated into global, disease-specific, and symptom-specific categories.

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