Patient reported outcomes: A bright future

摘要

For most of recorded medical history, it was the practitioner who made assessments as to theprogress or success of therapy. That therapy could be drug use, surgery, behavioral modi?-cation, information provision or a combination of some of these modalities. It was alwaysfelt that patients knew too little, were not reliable interpreters of symptom severity and wereanything but objective given their lack of comparison ability and their sample size of one.But, fortunately, that stance is coming to an end. The reasons are several and varied. For onething, some pathology areas are not amenable to clinician assessment. Can the physiciandescribe the pain a patient senses accurately on a 1-to-10 scale?