You report that 'Main themes identified describing joint involvement from this qualitative work: - Joint involvement includes: - Clinical and radiological manifestations of joints by RA - Degree and extent to which joints are affected by RA.'
Should deformity be included in your definition of joint involvement, in addition to joint swelling, tenderness and stiffness?
Dear Heidi,
You’re absolutely right. In the previous versions of the ‘joint involvement’ domain, we had included ‘joint deformity’ as a subdomain (from the winning and binning exercise). There were many discussions with the OMERACT TAG to align with existing definitions and domains, after which we agreed to the following: “For measurement and reporting, “joint pain”, “joint stiffness”, and “joint swelling” should be treated as disaggregated components of the domain “joint involvement,” and damage or activity-related manifestations should not be conflated with symptoms”.
‘Joint deformity’ is thus part of ‘damage’, not of ‘joint involvement’, which is a symptom. Unfortunately, ‘damage’ was not voted in as a core domain.
We will make sure to reflect this in the explanatory text.
Thank you,
Loreto