Summary
Until recently, outcomes research in peripheral arterial occlusive disease focused mainly on the measurement of walking distances recorded on a treadmill. There is increasing acceptance that the quality of life of patients should also be considered. It has been shown that generic questionnaires are not sensitive enough to detect the effects of treatment on quality of life; we therefore developed, and validated in Germany, a new disease-specific instrument, the Claudication Scale (CLAU-S). This scale comprises 80 items, which can be assigned to subscales measuring the following dimensions: ‘daily living’, ‘pain’, ‘complaints’, ‘social life’, ‘disease-specific anxiety’, and ‘mood’. It has been translated into 3 different European languages (French, English and Flemish) and then validated in each country. The findings of these validation studies have shown that the instrument is reliable, valid and able to discriminate between patients with different disease severities. In particular, the CLAU-S subscores showed a highly significant correlation with the pain-free walking distances recorded on the treadmill and, in a separate postmarketing surveillance study, with the physician’s assessment of the change in the patient’s condition following oral treatment with naftidrofuryl. We are currently investigating whether CLAU-S can detect treatment effects in a randomised placebo-controlled study.
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Spengel, F.A., Brown, T.M., Dietze, S. et al. The Claudication Scale (CLAU-S). Dis-Manage-Health-Outcomes 2 (Suppl 1), 65–70 (1997). https://doi.org/10.2165/00115677-199700021-00013
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.2165/00115677-199700021-00013