Acne is a distressing skin condition, characterized by incidence of pimples, blemishes (whiteheads and blackheads) and the scars the eventually lead to.
It is a common condition, afflicting - with varying degrees of severity - a majority of teenagers.
Other people who are commonly afflicted of acne are expectant mothers.
People undergoing major stresses in life may also find themselves suffering from acne.
High incidence of acne in these groups of people is attributable to hormonal changes that come with puberty/teenage and pregnancy, as well as the hormonal changes that extreme stress can induce.
Now in order to be in a position to effectively address it, experts grade acne.
The idea behind grading acne is to provide an objective criterion through which the severity of acne is assessed.
This is important, because thanks to its considerably distressing effect, acne is one of the conditions where every patient imagines that their case is the 'worst ever.
' For such (acne severity) grading purposes then, a number of scales have been developed.
1) One of the most commonly acne grading scales (especially in dermatological clinics) is what is referred to Cook's Scale.
The beauty of Cook's scale is that it makes use of photographs, so that the medical practitioner can compare what he or she is seeing in front of them with what is on Cook's scale - and decide on the appropriate course of action.
This is probably the most objective criterion for grading acne that we have, the fact that it doesn't make very much use of numbers notwithstanding.
2) The second acne grading scale is what is referred to as the Leeds scale.
Unlike Cook's scale, which is just about comparing photographs with reality, in the Leeds scale; numbers are introduced into the picture.
Thus we have acne being graded on a scale of zero to ten.
The movement here is from the most inflammatory lesions of acne to the least or non inflammatory.
Thus under this scale, zero doesn't necessarily mean that one is free from acne.
What it means is that one's acne is not inflammatory.
This is a very clinically oriented way of grading acne, because from a purely medical (rather than cosmetic) point of view, what is worrying about acne is not the disfiguring effect it can have per se, but the inflammation that it tends to cause.
3) The third acne grading scale is what we refer to as the Pillsbury Scale.
The beauty of Pillsbury scale is in its simplicity: for it considers acne in terms of 'severity' (which is what the whole grading business was all about), and then grades it on a scale ranging from 1 to 4.
The grading is also very straightforward, really, with 1 being for the least severe cases of acne, and 4 being for the severest cases of the condition.
It is from the grading results obtained using one of these scales, then, that dermatologists make up their minds whether to prescribe medications, just educate the patient on coping mechanism or - in the severest cases - prescribe radical measures like surgery.