Autologous transplantation techniques for vitiligo: how to evaluate treatment outcome

Effective methods for measuring treatment outcome in vitiligo are essential to accurately assess possible therapeutic modalities. This systematic review article aims to bring the problems concerning evaluation of treatment outcome in vitiligo studies using transplantation techniques to the attention of clinical investigators. Furthermore we highlight the interpretation of the achieved result from both physicians' and patients' view point using a questionnaire put to 558 dermatologists and 152 vitiligo patients in Belgium. There is no consensus about the choice of an evaluation method in surgical vitiligo studies. The interpretation of a 'successful' treatment result seemed to differ among dermatologists and vitiligo patients. We conclude that further research is needed to develop a universally accepted, objective, reliable and useful measurement method to evaluate the efficacy of surgical vitiligo treatments. A combination of both a clinical and a psychological measurement is likely to be the most appropriate choice.