Capturing the Patient's View of Change as a Clinical Outcome Measure

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Abstract
Especially in the past 2 decades, the growing prevalence of chronic disease has spurred the development of methods to measure a patient's health state and its changes resulting from disease or therapy. Such methods have been necessary because the clear outcomes of recovery or death, historically applied to acute disease, no longer suffice. Chronic disease unfolds over time with an undulating course, and available treatments have varying consequences. Thus, midcourse corrections in a patient's management are the rule and accurate assessments of changes in the patient's health state are necessary to guide those corrections.