Measuring the severity of upper gastrointestinal complaints: does GP assessment correspond with patients' self-assessment?

BACKGROUND: Questionnaires are frequently used to measure the severity of gastrointestinal (GI) complaints. These questionnaires can either be filled out by the physicians or by the patients, but it is not clear whether these scores correspond. This study aimed to investigate the interrater agreement between physician-reported severity and patient-reported severity concerning the patients' upper GI complaints.
METHODS: In a prospective observational study, the severity of eight GI complaints was registered by both patients and GPs independently on a seven-point scale (n = 316) before and after treatment with esomeprazole. Weighted kappa values for the agreement on the severity and simple kappa values for the agreement on the absence or presence of symptoms were calculated.
RESULTS: The weighted kappa values ranged from 0.14 to 0.68 indicating poor to moderate agreement. The agreement on the presence or absence of symptoms was similar. Several systematic differences in scoring were found: the GPs tended to underestimate the severity of belching, nausea, early satiety, vomiting and upper and lower abdominal pain. Furthermore, the treatment effect for belching and lower abdominal pain was more often overestimated, while the treatment effect for nausea was more often underestimated by the GP.
CONCLUSION: The agreement between GP and patient is low. The differences in scoring should be kept in mind when comparing physician-reported outcomes with patient-reported outcomes.