Page 16 - THE EVOLUTION OF EARLY ARTHRITIS AND CARDIOVASCULAR RISK Samina A. Turk
P. 16
CHAPTER 1
achieve remission according to the different response and remission definitions, as well as the agreement between these definitions. The patient’s perspective is increasingly recognized, but their perspective about determinants of disease activity that they associate with remission is unknown. Therefore, the disagreement between physician and patient was also studied in the same chapter. In the patients who were in remission according to the physician, we determined the differences in clinical variables and PROs between patients who did or did not perceive themselves as being in remission. As returning to normality is one of the three major themes of patient-perceived remission, chapter 8 focuses on this theme. As normality has no accepted definition yet, we assessed the ability of the normality scale to discriminate between remission and non- remission states according to the patient and to the American College of Rheumatology and the European League Against Rheumatism (ACR/EULAR) Boolean criteria.
Finally, in chapter 9 and chapter 10 the findings of this thesis are summarized and discussed, and implications for future research are given.
14
