Clinical history for inflammatory back pain in ankylosing spondylitis: the sensitivity, specificity and consistency of clinical features

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]. …