Treatment goals with psoriatic arthritis

[Fred]

This study asked “If you could improve one thing about your psoriatic arthritis, what would it be?” and “What would an effective treatment change for you?”

Quote:

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Objective:
The aim was to examine patient-reported treatment goals among individuals with psoriatic arthritis (PsA).

Methods:
Participants in the Psoriatic Arthritis Research Consortium (PARC) completed standardized assessments including patient-reported outcome (PROs) instruments between 2017-2020. Additionally, participants were asked two open-ended questions at enrollment or therapy initiation “If you could improve one thing about your disease, what would it be?” and “What would an effective treatment change for you?” to identify patients’ top improvement priority and their treatment impact goals, respectively. We categorized each response into a theme. The themes were matched to constructs measured by PRO items (i.e., pain, fatigue, skin, etc.). We describe themes and scores from matched PRO items.

Results:
Assessments were completed by 193 participants. Decreasing pain (56%) and improving skin (12%) were the most common improvement priorities. Impact goals were more diverse and included decreasing pain (24%), general improvement in life (18%), the ability to be more active (15%), participate in recreational activities (9%), function at work (11%) and exercise (5%). Of note, responses were often matched to more than one PRO item or instrument. The scores for PRO items that matched the patient's improvement priority, or the impact goal were higher than scores for the remainder of the population (i.e., fatigue item scores were higher among individuals identifying fatigue as their improvement priority).

Conclusions:
The heterogeneity of treatment goals underscores the importance of eliciting patient treatment goals to guide personalized management. Specific items within PROs may be helpful in identifying and following patient-specific treatment goals.

Source: onlinelibrary.wiley.com

*Funding: Early view funding unknown

[Turnedlight]

It’s interesting - it’s pain and improving pain levels that is the most important factor, skin being a bit less so.

[Fred]

It’s interesting - it’s pain and improving pain levels that is the most important factor, skin being a bit less so.

Yes for me getting rid of the pain is far more important than psoriasis.

[Caroline]

It’s interesting - it’s pain and improving pain levels that is the most important factor, skin being a bit less so.

Yes for me getting rid of the pain is far more important than psoriasis.

I agree with that.. being able to live without pain, or having less pain, and be able to do sports, walking and cycling, outweighs for me possible spots on my skin.
Though I do get that if your skin is really bad, that this gives a heavy burden to your life, certainly psychologically.

[Kat]

I think it's all relative to individuals.

I know that itching and scratching until the skin is raw, or dealing with an infection due to intense scratching is no picnic. I also have quite a bit of pain of various types, some worse than others. If I could trade for one for the other, I think my answer might vary at different times honestly.

[mataribot]

I think it's all relative to individuals.

I know that itching and scratching until the skin is raw, or dealing with an infection due to intense scratching is no picnic.  I also have quite a bit of pain of various types, some worse than others.  If I could trade for one for the other, I think my answer might vary at different times honestly.

I would agree with this. Most of the time, I would rather have treatment for the arthritis, but sometimes the psoriasis is bad where the the sun doesn’t shine and I’ll prioritize that.