• Dilek Solmaz, Ozgul Gunduz, Servet Akar, Gercek Can, Merih Birlik, Yesim Akkoc, Vedat Gerdan, Fatos Onen, and Nurullah Akkoc.
• Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Rheumatology, Faculty of Medicine, Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey.
• Int J Rheum Dis. 2017 Jan 1; 20 (1): 33-38.

ObjectiveTelephone surveys are less expensive and time-consuming for both interviewers and interviewees, with similar or even higher response rates than face-to-face interviews. In rheumatology, telephone technique has been used in a number of epidemiologic studies. In the present study, we conducted a telephone survey for screening inflammatory back pain (IBP) in the community.MethodsOne hundred and seventy-two patients with axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) and 25 patients with chronic mechanical back pain were included. A telephone interview and a face-to-face interview was conducted by the same physician using a standardized questionnaire that elicited information on all the components of IBP addressed in the Calin, Berlin and ASAS (the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis International Society) criteria sets. The telephone survey was repeated by another rheumatologist within the same week to assess the inter-rater agreement.ResultsOf 172 patients with axSpA, 114 could be classified as ankylosing spondylitis (AS) according to the modified New York criteria (AS group).The remaining 58 patients had active sacroiliitis on magnetic resonance imaging and they constituted the non-radiographic axSpA group (nr-axSpA group). Calin's criteria showed the highest sensitivity but also the lowest specificity with both interview methods. Calin's criteria showed the best agreement between the interview methods (kappa = 0.60).ConclusionThe results of our study indicate that telephone surveys based on Calin's criteria for IBP has a moderate, almost substantial agreement with face-to-face interviews and can be used as an easily applicable, less expensive and time-saving method in screening subjects for IBP.© 2015 Asia Pacific League of Associations for Rheumatology and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

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