The Journal of rheumatology. Supplement
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The goal of treatment for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is to achieve remission, or at least a low disease activity state. A variety of useful and practical tools are available to rheumatologists to assess patient prognosis and evaluate response to treatment in clinical practice. Frequent assessments, ideally every 1 to 3 months, allow rheumatologists to adjust therapy according to patient outcomes. For patients who fail to respond to treatment with classic disease modifying antirheumatic drugs, combination therapies with biologic agents offer improved outcomes.
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Clinical trials evaluating therapies for the management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) typically report disease activity using measures such as the American College of Rheumatology response criteria and Disease Activity Scores. Additional outcomes, such as feeling well and feeling less fatigue, appear to be more important to patients than traditional disease activity outcomes such as joint tenderness and stiffness. As a result, patient-driven outcomes are increasingly used in clinical trials of RA, and have been shown to provide useful information. It is proposed that factors such as Health Assessment Questionnaire scores, fatigue, sleep, and physical and mental function become part of a patient's core set of outcomes when assessing patients with RA.