Impact of Smoking On Pulmonary Tuberculosis

The preservation of physical function is one of the most importantissues in the long-term outcome in RA patients. Moreover, demonstratingpreserved physical function (as well as retarded structural damage) is aprerequisite for proving that a drug has disease-controlling capacity. (van der Heijde, 2002).We are however badly informed about the effect of RA on physicalactivity. One of the problems is knowing how to measure physicalfunction. In the older literature the function grade was used, but this is avery crude measure. The development of the health assessmentquestionnaire (HAQ) was a major step forwards. This instrument iscapable of detecting meaningful changes in function in individualpatients. (Young et al., 2000).The purpose of this work was to study the extent and the directionof individual variations between observed and self-assessed functionalability as measured by the HAQ. Moreover, the contribution ofdemographic, clinical features and the disease activity variables to apossible overestimation or underestimation of functional ability by RApatients is examined.This study was conducted on a total of 50 consecutive patients withRA according to the 1987 revised ARA criteria for the classification ofRA (Arnett et al., 1988).