Are Symptoms Measured by a Doctor the Same as the Symptoms Important to a Patient?

Are symptoms measured by a doctor the same as the symptoms important to a patient? CBR member Patricia Wren, of the School of Health Sciences, has found that sometimes they are not. In the May issue of the European Journal of Gastroenterology & Hepatology (Volume 21, Pages 558-564), Wren and her coworkers "aimed to identify which symptoms are important to patients and to compare these symptoms with a comprehensive list of commonly measured symptoms to evaluate whether the patient-reported important symptoms are represented in current disease activity indices for ulcerative colitis." They conclude that "current indices capture only a portion of the clinical symptoms that are important to patients in an ulcerative colitis flare, and may neither accurately measure nor fully reflect patients' experience of ulcerative colitis. These findings present an opportunity to develop better patient-centered measures of ulcerative colitis."