A Validated Assessment Scale for Asian Chin Projection

BACKGROUND As the number of different aesthetic treatments increase, numerous photonumeric assessment scales have been developed and validated to measure the effectiveness of these new treatments and techniques. Photonumeric rating scales have been developed to objectively assess improvements in anatomical areas; however, these have been based on the features of Caucasian patients. OBJECTIVE To develop and validate a Chin Projection Scale for use in the female Asian patient population. METHODS AND MATERIALS During 2 validation sessions, 13 raters assessed full frontal and lateral facial views of 50 Asian subjects and also estimated their age and the aesthetic treatment effort required for each subject. Chin projection was rated on a scale from 0 (optimal) to 4 (very severely receding). RESULTS Inter-rater reliability was 0.80 (substantial) for Validation Session 1 and 0.83 (almost perfect) for Validation Session 2. The results for Estimated Age and Estimated Treatment Effort were essentially the same. CONCLUSION This study demonstrated the validity of the first photonumeric assessment scale for assessing the appearance of the female Asian chin. This new scale will provide a standardized measure of chin projection for Asian patients in clinical practice and clinical research settings.