TY - JOUR T1 - Pragmatic Decisions Over Nonsteroidal Antiinflammatory Drug Treatment in Osteoarthritis — Continuous Versus Intermittent JF - The Journal of Rheumatology JO - J Rheumatol SP - 2501 LP - 2503 DO - 10.3899/jrheum.111102 VL - 38 IS - 12 AU - ROBERT ANDREW MOORE Y1 - 2011/12/01 UR - http://www.jrheum.org/content/38/12/2501.abstract N2 - The business of evidence has always been in a state of tension between a statistical perspective examining clinical trial efficacy and a clinical perspective predicated in maximizing benefits to the individual patient. A particular criticism of evidence-based medicine has been that while “Managers and trialists may be happy for treatments to work on average, patients expect their doctors to do better than that.”1 That clinical perspective has never been better stated in rheumatology — that while it is good to feel better, it is better to feel good2.Feeling good is strongly associated with chronic painful conditions only in a negative sense: the more pain, the worse the quality of life3. Because chronic pain is longstanding4 and interferes with a whole range of activities of daily living5, it is unsurprising that chronic musculoskeletal pain has a large negative influence on quality of life, as large as or larger than any other chronic disease for people living in the community6.Quantity of life is also negatively affected by chronic pain. Severe chronic pain is associated with increased mortality7. Increased disease activity is associated with increased mortality in ankylosing spondylitis8. Walking disability in patients with osteoarthritis (OA) is associated with a substantial increase in all-cause mortality … Address correspondence to Dr. Moore. E- mail: andrew.moore{at}nda.ox.ac.uk ER -