Improving clinical descriptions to understand the effects of dementia treatment: consensus recommendations
✍ Scribed by Kenneth Rockwood; Christine Joffres on behalf of the Halifax Consensus Conference on Understanding the Effects of Dementia Treatment; 21-24; November 2001
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2002
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 65 KB
- Volume
- 17
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0885-6230
- DOI
- 10.1002/gps.733
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Objectives:
To recommend how the description of clinically detectable treatment effects might be improved for antidementia drug trials.
Method:
Consensus conference, with review of available evidence.
Results:
We suggest widespread, systematic, qualitative studies, based on prospective observations such as the clinicians' narrative descriptions of patient's changes used in the clinician's interview-based impressions of change (cibic-plus), plus caregiver input. the identification of patient and caregiver expectations, and an understanding of how these expectations are met, are proposed as priorities for future study.
Conclusion:
Better descriptions of treatment effects can enhance our understanding of both clinical meaningfulness and cholinergic function in the brain.