Volume 36, no. 8 Remains Largely a Research Tool? Included in Most Routine Care for Rheumatoid Arthritis While a HAQ/MDHAQ Quantitative Clinical Rheumatology: Why Is a Test for Anti-CCP Antibodies THEODORE PINCUS, YUSUF YAZICI and MARTIN J. BERGMAN http://www.jrheum.org/content/36/8/1563 J Rheumatol 2009;36;1563-1564 http://www.jrheum.org/alerts 1. Sign up for TOCs and other alerts http://jrhe...

As an alternative to the calculation of change scores for health status questionnaires used in clinical trials or longitudinal studies, transitional questions have been developed for patients to assess changes directly themselves. Here the original Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) is compared with a modified version of the HAQ (MHAQ) which contains transition questions used at follow up. T...

OBJECTIVE To assist in the interpretation of the Stanford Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) score changes for individual patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), by determining the minimum size of score change that can confidently be considered to reflect a significant change in disability from the patient's perspective. METHOD HAQ score changes were calculated for 40 clinic patients with...

OBJECTIVE Generalized OA (GOA) is highly prevalent in OA. Individuals with GOA typically suffer from limitations of both upper and lower extremity function, yet we lack a validated instrument to assess their activity limitations. An appropriate instrument might be the HAQ Disability Index (HAQ-DI). Therefore the aim of this study was to evaluate the measurement properties of the HAQ-DI in GOA. ...

AIM Functional status at one moment in time is a determinant of future functional status and survival. Physical deterioration tends to occur early in the disabling process; however, etiological questions remain. This study investigated the association between physical performance characteristics and functioning independently in middle-aged and elderly men. METHODS A total of 400 independently...