HEALTHIs arthritis medicine working? Ask what the patient thinksStandardized questions can measure patient well-being as accurately as more costly and time-consuming lab tests or joint assessments, a study suggests.By Victoria Stagg Elliott, amednews staff. March 24/31, 2003. A brief patient questionnaire completed in the waiting room and then interpreted by the doctor may be an effective and time-efficient tool to determine if a drug for rheumatoid arthritis is working. Physicians and researchers have long struggled to develop objective measurements of improvement for these patients that take up less time and resources than most current approaches. For instance, the most accepted method -- the core data set from the American College of Rheumatology, ACR20, which includes seven measurements -- is primarily reserved for research settings because it is time-intensive. "We would all like to do an ACR20, but in a busy clinical practice that's not possible," said Kent Kwoh, MD, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. A study published in the March Arthritis & Rheumatism offered a possible alternative. A patient questionnaire incorporating only three of the seven measurements can be as accurate as the full assessment, according to the researchers. "It's simple, but most things that really work in the world are deceptively simple," said Theodore Pincus, MD, lead author of the paper and professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. "The more complicated you make things, the more measurement error there usually is." Study authors suggested that this questionnaire approach could make standardized measures a more regular part of clinical practice because of its time efficiency. The abbreviated assessment could also make drug trials cheaper. [...]Full text of American Medical News content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2003 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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The doctors are in the house
The AMA's House of Delegates is holding its Interim Meeting Nov. 7-10 in Houston, addressing issues such as health system reform and physician payment. Meeting coverage - Slideshow Feature articlesHealth reform review The Massachusetts experience Litigation stress Being sued is personal as well as professional Comprehensive coverage
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