Once the treatment has been chosen and the patient has been given the appropriate advice, a decision must be taken on  how frequently  the  patient should  be reviewed. In  the  majority  of  cases review  every  3-4 months is sufficient provided progress is satisfactory. However, the patient should be told that, if the acne is not responding as well as he would like, he should make an urgent appointment for review.

 

  Ideally  any physician treating acne  should  use a grading scale to assess progress. Since the practitioner monitors the treatment of hypertension by  measuring blood pressure, and diabetes is monitored by checking blood sugar levels and the urine for sugar,  there is no reason why  the skin,  visible to all, cannot  be graded. 

The technique is simple to learn; after having tried the acne grading procedure on fifty or so patients even the general practitioner should be in a good position adequately to monitor acne.