Published in:
01-01-2009 | Letter to the Editor
Clinical history for inflammatory back pain in ankylosing spondylitis: the sensitivity, specificity and consistency of clinical features
Authors:
Servet Akar, Merih Birlik, Kenan Aksu, Ozlem Senocak, Nurullah Akkoc, Yasemin Kabasakal, Fatos Onen
Published in:
Rheumatology International
|
Issue 3/2009
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Excerpt
Among patients with chronic back pain the prevalence of spondyloarthritides (SpA) was found to be 5% [
1]. Inflammatory back pain (IBP) is the key symptom of SpA and is present in around 75% of patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Clinical detection of IBP is often difficult. In the screening questionnaire by Calin et al. [
2] clinical characteristics of back pain that is in a patient younger than 40 years, insidious in onset, persisting for at least 3 months, associated with morning stiffness and improving with exercise were found to be 95% sensitive and 76% specific for AS in comparison with mechanical low back pain (MLBP). Although clinical definition of back pain in modified New York criteria for AS [
3] was based on the findings of Calin et al., subsequent studies showed that the sensitivity and specificity of the original proposal were about only 23 and 75% [
4,
5], respectively. In the present cross-sectional study, we re-explore the sensitivity, specificity and consistency of criteria set for IBP proposed originally by Calin et al. [
2]. …