Evaluation of the activity of rheumatoid arthritis in clinical practice. Agreement between self-rated clinimetric evaluation and clinical evaluation with activity indexes: DAS28, CDAI and SDAI

Abstract

Introduction and objective: To achieve control of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) it is necessary to be able to evaluate its activity. The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) recommends for this purpose indexes of activity that can be performed by the patient (PAS-II and RAPID-3) and IA including medical evaluation with laboratory studies (DAS28 and SDAI) or without them (CDAI). The objective was to analyze the concordance between self-rated clinimetric evaluation and clinimetric evaluation performed by the physician.

Patients and method: Analytical cross-sectional study in 126 patients with RA. The agreement was evaluated through the weighted κ coefficient and the Krippendorff's α coefficient.

Results: The PAS-II and RAPID-3 significantly correlated with all variables included in the core set of measures recommended by the ACR/EULAR. The agreement between PAS-II and CDAI-SDAI was good (κ: 0.6, α: 0.61-0.62), and moderate with DAS28-ESR (κ: 0.53, α: 0.56). The concordance between RAPID-3 and CDAI-SDAI was moderate (κ: 0.55-0.57, α: 0.50-0.51), and moderate with DAS28-ESR (κ: 0.55, α: 0.53). When categorizing the activity in remission/low activity vs. moderate/severe activity, the agreement was greater with the PAS-II (0.59 vs. 0.34; P=.012).

Conclusion: The good concordance between PAS-II and SDAI supports their use in clinical practice, especially if biomarkers of inflammation or the possibility of joint count are not available. However, in order to recommend its routine application in clinical practice, it is necessary to perform longitudinal studies that assess its responsiveness.

Keywords: Agreement; Artritis reumatoide; Autoevaluación; Clinimetrics; Clinimetría; Concordancia; Patient-reported outcomes; Resultados comunicados por los pacientes; Rheumatoid arthritis; Self-assessment.