Development and preliminary assessment of a simple measure of overall status in rheumatoid arthritis (OSRA) for routine clinical use.

We describe the development and initial assessment of a simple measure of overall status in rheumatoid arthritis (OSRA) for use in the routine clinical setting. The measure is constructed in four parts: demographic details, activity score, damage score and treatment category. It requires no laboratory tests and uses details collected routinely during a clinic visit. It was validated in a series of 488 patients. The measure proved acceptable and demonstrated face, content, construct and discriminant validity. OSRA will be useful as an audit tool in the serial follow-up of RA patients and in describing the characteristics of a population of such patients.