Can standard rheumatology clinical practice be patient-based?

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are an attractive option in standard clinical practice. However, they do need to be validated on a broader spectrum of disease activity. Another factor to consider is patient adherence to treatment programmes which is directly linked to their satisfaction with clinical outcome. A recently developed multidimensional health assessment questionnaire has proved to be valid, save time and provide permanent medical and medico-legal documentation of the patient status at a given time. The questionnaire gives patients the opportunity to record their joint pain from their own perspective. The aim of this work was to examine whether the patient's self-assessment of tender joint counts agrees with the physician's evaluation, and whether it correlates with other disease activity parameters.