Search results

"Somatic symptoms" - always hard to know if words mean what they are supposed to, or if they have a meaning that is almost the opposite of that. I was well into the Methods section before I had any idea, and, even then, I wasn't really sure:

Sorry, fixed now

The paper and related issues are discussed in a brief communication, perhaps an editorial: The value of patient-reported outcome measures for multiple sclerosis https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9326853/ Some excerpts: However, the authors of the editorial suggest that perhaps...

I note the last two sentences of the abstract: Our findings show a disconnect between disability worsening and PROM change in this population. Our findings raise caution about the use of these PROMs as primary outcome measures in SPMS trials and call for a critical reappraisal of the...

Abstract Background: Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are often used in clinical research, but little is known about their performance as longitudinal outcomes. Methods: We used data from ASCEND, a large SPMS trial (n = 889), to investigate changes on the Short Form Health Survey 36...

Yes, this. That's a very interesting paper. I'll make a thread for it. Thread here.

I'm not sure this has net value though. It might be better than the Chalder questionnaire, but, when we say, this still isn't great, we want objective measures of activity and gait and reaction times in order to assess any interventions and to gather useful data on disease course, we'll get...

You are, of course, right. I used the 'e.g.' slightly wrong. 'i.e.' would have been closer to my intent. I meant the main UK ME/CFS charities, ideally acting altogether via Forward-ME, or alone. As you note above, Forward-ME's context suggests it was set up to act in a unified way. It...

I've checked, I'm pretty sure I didn't make a mistake. The title isn't perfectly the same, but the page numbers in the Australian Medical Journal are exactly the same: MJA 1996;164:585-588 If anyone has the time to check what I'm saying about the incorrect citation in the Murtagh article...

Out of nowhere, somatoform disorders makes a showing: There's nothing in this paper to support that contention. They note that the people who they labelled as having fatigue were not more likely to receive a lifetime diagnosis of depression. There's this remarkable paragraph, although it too...

That seems pretty important. (Bearing in mind that the "fatigue" here isn't really fatigue, it's a range of things, but is better labelled as pain, than fatigue. And, I'm not at all confident in the CIDI diagnoses either, CIDI is the 'computerised version of the Composite International...

Yes, so the measure of fatigue is actually non-specific and so is the measure of psychological disorders. It's quite unreasonable to start correlating these inaccurate measures and suggest that it tells us anything useful about the presence of psychological disorders in people with fatigue...

So, to the GHQ-30, which supposedly detects cases of psychological disorder. That was the one that has 30 items, and people were defined as having a psychological disorder if they experienced at least five of the symptoms 'more than usual'. 1. Could not concentrate on whatever you are doing...

Oh, here are the questions in the modified SOFA - the measure of fatigue: 1. I feel tired for a long time after physical activity 2. My concentration is poor 3. My muscles feel very tired after physical activity 4. I get headaches 5. I need to sleep for long periods 6. I get muscle pain after...

"Fatigue was more common in women, patients of a lower socioeconomic status and patients with fewer years of formal education." Patients from the practice in the poorest area had the highest rates of fatigue and psychological disorder. On the 'fatigue' classification using the modified SOFA...

Around a quarter of people approached to participate refused. 1593 people participated. 75% of the sample was female. 25% of the participants reported three or more symptoms of 'fatigue', from the SOFA questionnaire. (But, actually, these were supposedly symptoms of chronic fatigue...

Back to the 1996 paper: A series of questionnaires were administered to people attending GP clinics in Sydney. GHQ - General Health Questionnaire - "used to detect cases of psychological disorder" "symptoms include anxiety and depression; patients were defined as having a "psychological"...

This paper has been cited in support of this statement: in an article in the Australian Family Physician by John Murtagh - reproduced on the Royal Australian College of GPs website: https://www.racgp.org.au/getattachment/9842f4ab-a0a8-4c67-8546-271853a0d0f7/attachment.aspx Content from that...

An old but influential paper: I B Hickie 1, A W Hooker, D Hadzi-Pavlovic, B K Bennett, A J Wilson, A R Lloyd Abstract Objectives: To determine the prevalence and sociodemographic and psychiatric correlates of prolonged fatigue syndromes among patients in primary care. Design: Prospective...

Revising a diagnosis of functional neurological disorder—a case report, 2020, Berry and Weithoff The text actually used the word 'refine', as in the 'FND diagnosis was refined to progressive supranuclear palsy'. Functional neurological symptoms as initial presentation of Creutzfeldt-Jakob...