Journal of evaluation in clinical practice
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RATIONALE, AIMS AND Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is an archetypical chronic condition of significant prevalence. Yet the concept of cure in the context of T2D reveals an interplay between the medical imagination and clinical realities that can shift the course of a patient's care. ⋯ Lay epistemologies of cure tend to be focused on modifying the experience of having T2D, while professional epistemologies tend to focus on modifying the disease through medical treatment. The objective of this study is to explore the role of the concept of cure in the context of type 2 diabetes, a model for chronic disease.
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In clinical practise and in clinical studies on depression it is important to estimate whether changes in symptomatology measured by self-rating instruments are, in fact, clinically relevant. Therefore, the aim of the study was to estimate the clinical relevance of changes on the 15-item version of the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D-15) based on the concept of the minimal clinically important difference (MCID). ⋯ Anchor-based values are suggested here as an estimation of the clinical relevance of changes in the CES-D-15. Thus, instead of relying solely on effect sizes, the evaluation of treatment outcomes should be supplemented by reporting the percentage of patients who have reached the MCID. Further examinations to verify our results in other patient populations and with other types of anchor criteria will be needed.