ArticleArthritis care & research2025
Comparison of Three Physician Global Assessment Instruments in Systemic Sclerosis.
Article in Arthritis care & research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Discordance Between Patient and Physician Global Assessments in Early Systemic Sclerosis.Arthritis care & research · 2026Article
- 'Am I doing this right?' Physician perceptions of the global assessment in clinical trials of systemic sclerosis.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
15 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivePhysician global assessments (PhyGAs) are variably applied in systemic sclerosis (SSc) clinical trials. The comparability of different PhyGA results is unknown. We sought to assess the comparability of results from three different PhyGA instruments simultaneously applied in the Australian Scleroderma Cohort Study (ASCS).
methodsUsing data from 1,965 ASCS participants, we assessed the correlation between results of three PhyGA assessments: (1) overall health, (2) activity, and (3) damage. We evaluated the concordance of change in each PhyGA between study visits. Ordered logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the clinical associations of each PhyGA.
resultsThe absolute scores of each PhyGA were strongly correlated at individual study visits. Concordant changes of the PhyGA scores occurred between 50% of study visits. Only patient-reported breathlessness was associated with all three PhyGA scores (overall health: odds ratio [OR] 1.67, P < 0.01; activity: OR 1.44, P < 0.01; damage: OR 1.32, P < 0.01). Changes in physician-assessed activity scores were also associated with patient-reported worsening skin disease (OR 1.25, P = 0.03) and fecal incontinence (OR 1.23, P = 0.01), whereas damage scores were associated with respiratory disease (pulmonary arterial hypertension: OR 1.25, P = 0.03; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: OR 1.37, P = 0.04), as well as skin scores (OR 1.02, P < 0.01) and fecal incontinence (OR 1.21, P = 0.02).
conclusionPhyGAs of overall health, activity, and damage are each associated with different SSc features, and changes in different PhyGA scores are discordant 50% of the time. Our findings suggest results of variably worded PhyGAs are not directly interchangeable and support the development of a standardized PhyGA.
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