Attitudes of dermatologists toward the Chapel Hill Consensus Conference nomenclature and classification

This study was designed to explore the attitudes of dermatologists towards the Chapel Hill Consensus Conference (CHCC) nomenclature and classification. We developed a questionnaire to determine the views of chief assistant dermatological professors at 61 Japanese university hospitals. A chi2 analysis of the responses found a close relationship between dermatological facilities that based their evaluations on the CHCC and their likelihood of taking confirmatory skin biopsies from patients with suspected microscopic polyangiitis with cutaneous features. In those facilities, the physicians and pathologists tended to consider cutaneous polyarteritis nodosa and cutaneous leucocytoclastic angiitis as independent disease conditions. We believe that it would be beneficial for dermatologists to take advantage of the CHCC, through which an appropriate early diagnosis of vasculitis can be realized. The present investigation provides a picture of current practices of Japanese dermatologists with reference to the management of vasculitis, including the extent to which biopsies are used to establish the diagnosis.