Table 1

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.