Items important to consider in the definition of rheumatoid arthritis flare (new onset or increase in disease) elicited during patient semistructured interviews and the Delphi consensus method for physicians
Patient perspective | Physician perspective | ||
---|---|---|---|
Selected items | Frequency (%) | Frequency (%) | |
Joint swelling | 50 | Joint swelling | 100 |
Severe or unbearable joint pain | 61 | Joint pain level | 100 |
Night awakening by pain | 81 | Night awakening by pain | 92 |
Daily dose of analgesics | 26 | Daily dose of analgesics | 77 |
Fatigue | 93 | Morning stiffness | 92 |
Could not ‘do a thing’ | 18 | Patient global assessment of arthritis | 100 |
Increased need for help | 86 | C-reactive protein level or erythrocyte sedimentation rate | 100 |
Withdrawal, wish to stay alone | 19 | Daily dose of steroids | 77 |
Feeling depressed | 74 | ||
Irritability | 53 | ||
Non-selected items | |||
Extra-articular manifestations | 62 | ||
Disability, work limitation | 46 | ||
Joint imaging (eg, ultrasound) | 38 | ||
Physician global assessment | 38 | ||
Feeling of an arthritic flare |
‘Non-selected items’ refer to items not selected during the last round of the Delphi process in the list devoted to the rheumatologists' perspective, as fewer than 75% of rheumatologists accepted them in this round (62%, 46%, 38%). Conversely, all attributes identified during the analysis of the semistructured interviews were kept in the patient's list.