Daily health status registration (patient diary) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a comparison between personal digital assistant and paper-pencil format.
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2007-04-19
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Abstract
OBJECTIVE The patient perspective workshops at the Outcome Measures in Rheumatology Clinical Trials have included daily measures of health status patient diary and use of electronic tools for data collection in the research agenda The objective of this study was to compare daily and weekly registrations of self reported health status measures between personal digital assistant PDA and paper pencil PP format regarding scores variation and feasibility METHODS Thirty eight patients with stable rheumatoid arthritis recorded their health status during 84 days in a repeated crossover design using PDA or PP format during four 21 day periods Visual analog scales VAS for pain fatigue and global disease and the Rheumatoid Arthritis Disease Activity Index were scored daily the Short Form 36 and Modified Health Assessment Questionnaire were scored weekly RESULTS The average scores and measures of variation of the 4 daily health status measures over 21 days did not differ significantly between PDA and PP formats in either of the 2 crossover periods The values for the average range between the maximum and minimum values for daily measures were similar between the 2 formats but showed considerable variation e g range for pain VAS was 19 28 mm over each 21 day period The time to complete the instruments was similar between the 2 formats Missing daily data entries were generally low for both periods and somewhat higher for PDA The majority of patients 82 9 preferred using PDA CONCLUSION Daily assessments with PDA may be efficiently used for frequent data collection because this format performs similarly to the traditional PP format