Abstract
The work reported by Dr Chong and his colleagues in this issue ofthe Journal of Vas cuI a r Surgery represents an important step fonvard for our patients with intermittent claudication. Whereas in the recent past we have mea sured success in their care largely with physician-cen tered metrics, we will now, with confidence in the valid ity of the measures, be able to refine our assessment of their overall well being as it pertains to their arterial disease. Intermittent claudication is not a life-threatening dis ease in and of itself. For patients who are relatively asymp tomatic from their burden of atherosclerosis in other arte rial beds and from other comorbid conditions, however, intermittent claudication does threaten the quality of life. Without serial assessment of the perception of quality oflife of a patient with claudication, physicians purporting to treat or follow the progress of the disease will have an incomplete picture of its course and effect on the patient. It is for this reason that the Trans-Atlantic Consensus Con ference on Clinical Trials in Peripheral Artery Disease} recommended that disease-specific functional health mea surement should be an integral part of primary outcome measurement in intermittent claudication. Functional health and health-related quality oflife as sessment have been topics of general interest tor many years. One might argue that there was no need for addi tional time, effort, and journal pages to be devoted to the development and reporting of an additional instrument for assessing these dimensions 111 patients with intermittent claudication. There are several reasons why this is not the case. First, existing instruments are frequently insensitive
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