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A Computerized Assessment of Verbal and Visuospatial Memory (Dys)functions in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis [Response to Letter]
Authors Visu-Petra L
Received 6 October 2020
Accepted for publication 6 October 2020
Published 19 October 2020 Volume 2020:13 Pages 843—844
Laura Visu-Petra
Department of Psychology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca 400015, Romania
Correspondence: Laura Visu-Petra Email [email protected]
Thank you for the opportunity to reply to the letter you received about our paper “A Computerized Assessment of Verbal and Visuospatial Memory (Dys)functions in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis”.1 We appreciate Ketut Andika Priastana’s comments and interest towards our paper. However, we are not entirely convinced that responding to the minor issues brought up would make a substantial contribution to the paper, given the brevity encouraged by the journal and the fact that we used standardized (and widely known) clinical and neuropsychological tests, and referred the reader to the original source for details.
View the original paper by Petra and colleagues
This is in response to the Letter to the Editor
Dear editor
Thank you for the opportunity to reply to the letter you received about our paper “A Computerized Assessment of Verbal and Visuospatial Memory (Dys)functions in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis”.1 We appreciate Ketut Andika Priastana’s comments and interest towards our paper. However, we are not entirely convinced that responding to the minor issues brought up would make a substantial contribution to the paper, given the brevity encouraged by the journal and the fact that we used standardized (and widely known) clinical and neuropsychological tests, and referred the reader to the original source for details.
Firstly, we do not consider that the absence of explaining in detail two of the most widely used clinical instruments, the Disease Activity Score-28 using CRP (DAS28-CRP) and the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), represents a shortcoming of the current article. Both these measures have already been extensively validated as feasible tools to assess disease activity and functional status in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The papers by Scanlon et al,2 Mitrović et al,3 Tada et al4 are only some examples of studies in which the instruments have been used and mentioned as such, without further detailed explanation.
Secondly, CANTAB tests were administered as specified in the procedure from the test manual,5 cited as such in the paper and not modified (except for the translation of the items into Romanian which was approved by the test publisher). We do not see why the reference indicated in the letter would be more valid in specifying these administration steps as compared to the CANTAB manual.
We thank again the reader for their interest and comments about our work and the Editor for bringing them to our attention.
Disclosure
The author reports no conflicts of interest in this communication.
References
1. Petra CV, Visu-Petra L, Buta M, Tămaș MM, Benga O, Rednic S. A computerized assessment of verbal and visuospatial memory (Dys)functions in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2020;13:619–629. doi:10.2147/PRBM.S261312
2. Scanlon EM, Mankad R, Crowson CS, et al. Cardiovascular risk assessment in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a correlative study of noninvasive arterial health testing. Clin Rheumatol. 2016;36(4):763–771. doi:10.1007/s10067-016-3515-3
3. Mitrović J, Morović-Vergles J, Horvatić I, Badžak J, Stojić M, Gamulin S. Ambulatory arterial stiffness index and carotid intima-media thickness in hypertensive rheumatoid patients: a comparative cross-sectional study. Int J Rheum Dis. 2015;20(12):1998–2002. doi:10.1111/1756-185X.12613
4. Tada M, Yamada Y, Mandai K, Hidaka N. Correlation between frailty and disease activity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: data from the CHIKARA study. Geriatr Gerontol Int. 2019;19(12):1220–1225. doi:10.1111/ggi.13795
5. CANTABeclipse Test Administration Guide. Manual Version 3.0.0. Cambridge Cognition Limited; 2006.
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