title: [Do patients with active chronic polyarthritis get "basic therapy"?].
abstract: The determination of the adequacy of an individual therapeutical regimen is part of the process evaluation of medical care. To evaluate the adequacy of individual antirheumatic therapy, we developed a five step procedure: 1. Assessment of the patient's health status; 2. assessment of his/her former and current therapy; 3. determination of the adequate antirheumatic therapy following an explicit norm; 4. formal comparison of current and adequate treatment; 5. clinical evaluation of possible differences between norm and reality. Due to methodological reasons we concentrated on the current treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (rA) patients with remission inducing drugs (RIDs; e.g. Chloroquine, Gold). The study analyzed the RID treatment of 75 rA-sufferers; 25 patients were referred to our outpatient department for the first time in late 1986; 25 patients were recruited from a social-medical study covering employed but actually disabled members of a major health insurance (AOK) in Hannover; 25 subjects were derived from an ongoing population study ("prevalence and care of rheumatoid arthritis in Hannover"). Only 9 out of 49 (18%) patients with an active disease, formally in need of treatment, were currently treated with RIDs. Thus 40 out of 49 (82%) seemed to be under an inadequate treatment. From the clinical point of view this formal judgement was assumed to be false positive in 5 and false negative in 15 cases. In relation to the clinical judgements we found for the formal procedure a sensitivity of 0.70 with a specificity of 0.80 and an overall agreement of 73% (kappa 0.44).
authors.affiliation: Abteilung Rheumatologie, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover.
authors.forename: H H
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Raspe
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wasmus
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000894:Anti-Inflammatory Agents, Non-Steroidal / Q000627:therapeutic use; D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy*; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010347:Patient Care Planning; D011379:Prognosis
chemical_list: D000894:Anti-Inflammatory Agents, Non-Steroidal
vernacular_title: Erhalten Kranke mit einer aktiven chronischen Polyarthritis eine "Basistherapie"?