Comparison of the Belgian Rheumatoid Arthritis Disability Assessment and Health Assessment Questionnaires as Tools to Predict the Need for Support Measures in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

OBJECTIVE Scores on the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) predict the need for support measures in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In this study we compare the performance of the HAQ in this context with that of the more disease-specific Belgian Rheumatoid Arthritis Disability Assessment (BRADA) questionnaire. METHODS In this multicenter observational study, patients with RA and disease duration of at least one year who consulted their rheumatologist for a routine follow-up visit filled out the HAQ, and BRADA questionnaires. The performance of HAQ and BRADA to predict the need for support measures available to patients with RA was evaluated using Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curves, with the expert opinion of the rheumatologist as a reference. RESULTS The study analyzed data of 301 patients with RA (70.8% females) with mean age 59.8 ± 12.8, disease duration 11.4 ± 9.3 years, and DAS28 values of 2.84 ± 1.18. HAQ scores averaged 0.97 ± 0.73 and BRADA scores were 3.92 ± 3.49 over the last week and 3.89 ± 3.50 over the last 3 months. The area under the ROC curves for the BRADA scores for the support measures investigated ranged from 0.702 to 0.862 and did not differ significantly from those of the HAQ (range 0.725-0.860). CONCLUSION The disease-specific BRADA questionnaire is equivalent to the HAQ in predicting the need for support measures in patients with stable RA.