Lewis R V
Hum Toxicol. 1987 May;6(3):195-201. doi: 10.1177/096032718700600304.
Beta-blockers are often prescribed for patients who are asymptomatic and for whom the benefits of therapy are likely to be small. Side-effects are therefore of great importance. Symptoms such as muscle fatigue and peripheral coldness are commonly associated with treatment with beta-blockers but these subjective phenomena are difficult to detect and quantify so that their prevalence and severity are uncertain. Conventional symptom questionnaires may be relatively insensitive and visual analogue scales (VAS), which permit interval quantification of subjective phenomena, may have some advantages. They appear to be able to detect the presence of tiredness of the legs and peripheral coldness among hypertensive patients taking beta-blockers and are more sensitive than descriptive or 'category' questionnaires. However, some patients find VAS hard to understand and a minority of patients score erratically for all symptoms. A most detailed explanation is of paramount importance. Scores derived from VAS surveys are not normally distributed and should be examined using non-parametric statistical methods; normalising transformations do not improve the sensitivity of the method.
β受体阻滞剂常用于无症状患者，而这些患者接受治疗的获益可能很小。因此，副作用非常重要。诸如肌肉疲劳和外周发冷等症状通常与β受体阻滞剂治疗相关，但这些主观现象难以检测和量化，因此其发生率和严重程度尚不确定。传统的症状问卷可能相对不敏感，而视觉模拟量表（VAS）能够对主观现象进行区间量化，可能具有一些优势。它们似乎能够检测出服用β受体阻滞剂的高血压患者腿部疲劳和外周发冷的情况，并且比描述性或“分类”问卷更敏感。然而，一些患者觉得VAS难以理解，少数患者对所有症状的评分都不稳定。最详细的解释至关重要。VAS调查得出的分数并非呈正态分布，应使用非参数统计方法进行检验；标准化转换并不能提高该方法的敏感性。
