Dermatológia pre prax 2/2021

Benefit of scoring systems for the diagnosis and treatment of actinic keratoses

Actinic keratoses (AK) are a chronic and recurent disease caused by long-term exposure to sunlight,they are very common in everyday dermatological practice. They are considered early in situ squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). Because the entire area of skin exposed to sunlight is affected by both clinical and subclinical manifestataions of the disease that result in field cancerisation, it is necessary to treat all AK lesions in the affected field. Clinical examination of individual AK lesions does not always correspond to an acurate histological finding. This necessitated the need to develop scoring systems to evaluate severity of actinic keratoses in the whole field of disability. Scoring systems AK-FAS (Actinic Keratosis Field Assessment Scale) and AKASI (Actinic Keratosis Area And Severity Index) can be used to define therapeutic targets, to evaluate the effectiveness of new treatments, to compare the effectiveness of different therapeutic modalities.

Keywords: actinic keratosis, field cancerisation, scoring systems, AK-FAS, AKASI