Comparison between physician and patient completed visual analogue scales.

In a multicentre general practitioner trial, in which patients were treated with various dose regimes of clomipramine (Anafranil, Geigy Pharmaceuticals), patients and doctors completed independently of each other a series of visual analogue scales on admission and after one, two and four weeks of treatment. A regression technique is described to deal with the comparison between patient and doctor completed scales. It is suggested that this method is more informative than just giving correlations between ratings. The study shows that for the two target symptoms, depression and anxiety, the agreement between patient and doctor ratings is poor, particularly at the beginning of the study. The 'best' results are obtained for initial sleep, appetite and libido. Some explanations for these findings are offered, and further researches of the visual analogue scale are suggested.