The value of inquiring about functional impairments for early identification of inflammatory arthritis: a large cross-sectional derivation and validation study from the Netherlands

摘要

Healthcare professionals other than rheumatologists experience difficulties in detecting early inflammatory arthritis (IA) by joint examination. Self-reported symptoms are increasingly considered as helpful and could be incorporated in online tools to assist healthcare professionals, but first their discriminative ability must be assessed. As part of this effort, we evaluated whether inquiring about functional impairments could aid early IA identification.