title: Percentile benchmarks in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: Health Assessment Questionnaire as a quality indicator (QI).
abstract: Physicians are in need of a simple objective, standardized tool to compare their patients with rheumatoid arthritis, as a group and individually, with national standards. The Disability Index of the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ-DI) is a simple, robust tool that can fulfill these needs. However, use of this tool as a quality indicator (QI) is hampered by the unavailability of national reference values or benchmarks based on large, multicentric, heterogenous longitudinal patient cohorts. We utilized the 20-year longitudinal prospective data from 11 data banks of Arthritis Rheumatism and Aging Medical Information to calculate reference values for HAQ-DI. Overall, 6436 patients with rheumatoid arthritis were longitudinally followed for 32,324 person-years over the 20 years from 1981 to 2000. There were 64,647 HAQ-DI measurements, with an average of 19 measurements per person. Overall, 75% of patients were women and 89% were Caucasian; the median baseline age was 58.4 years and the median baseline HAQ-DI was 1.13. Few patients were treated with biologics. The HAQ-DI values had a Gaussian distribution except for the approximately 10% of observations showing no disability. Percentile benchmarks allow disability outcomes to be compared and contrasted between different patient populations. Reference values for the HAQ-DI, presented here numerically and graphically, can be used in clinical practice as a QI measure to track functional disability outcomes and to measure response to therapy, and by arthritis patients in self-management programs.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Research Center of Reading, West Reading, PA, USA. Eswar_krishnan@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Eswar
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Krishnan
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tugwell
authors.forename: James F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Fries
mesh_terms: D018501:Antirheumatic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use; D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D001688:Biological Products / Q000627:therapeutic use; D002170:Canada; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004185:Disability Evaluation; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012016:Reference Values; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D018501:Antirheumatic Agents; D001688:Biological Products