Endocrine Abstracts

Inconsistences in hirsutism evaluation using The Modified Ferriman-Gallwey scale (mFG) between different evaluators and need for hirsutism diagnostics standardization has been reported in numerous publications.

The aim of the study was to determine the differences in the evaluation of female hirsutism between researchers.

Results: The study included healthy 20–34 year old (mean age 25.2 years, 95% CI 23.8–26.5) women with regular menstrual cycles. The total mean score of the subjects’ self-evaluation was 7.0, 95% CI 4.6–9.3. The total mean score of the evaluation given by the researchers was 2.81, 95% CI 1.5–4.2. The odds ratio for erroneous evaluation of hirsutism on the upper lip was 1.31 (95% CI 1.02–1.69), on the lower abdomen and the thigh – 5.44 (95% CI 4.23–7.02), and on the chest – 0.02 (95% CI 0.02–0.04).

Conclusions: A discrepancy was found between the evaluations submitted by the expert physician and one of evaluators, whereas the differences between the evaluations presented by the other researchers were not significant. The women who participated in the study significantly more frequently submitted higher mFG scores when evaluating their hirsutism than the researchers did. The greatest differences between the evaluations of hirsutism were found on the upper lip, the lower abdomen, and thighs. Extensive training is needed before starting use The Modified Ferriman-Gallwey scale in order to get reliable results of hirsutism evaluation.