ABSTRACT
Taking the patient’s quality of life (QoL) into account in dermatological therapy has only become a matter of course over the past two decades. The ethical basis for this is found in the conception that it is necessary in taking any therapeutic decision to determine whether the benefit of treatment justifies the risks and the cost of therapy and whether the patient will benefit from the measures applied.1 This is based on the patient’s perspective and recording of how he experiences the treatment which he undergoes. Therapy decisions were often not made with the patient but about the patient. A patient movement has only arisen in the recent past in several countries whose activity is expressed in both self-help groups and in public lobbying and which has vehemently made clear to research that the relevance for the patient must be proven both in clinical studies and in basic research.
