Related Articles

The original idea behind the CAT’s development was that it should aid communication between patient and clinician. Use of modern psychometrics in its development allows it to do much more than that. This review has shown that it provides reliable measurement of a complex construct, overall health status impairment, using a very small number of items. CAT scores can aid assessment of patients and communication between healthcare professionals in routine practice, and help characterise patients and measure outcomes in clinical studies.

The fact that this review of the CAT identified so many studies, performed in so many patients, in such a short time is clearly a testament to its strengths: it is short, easy, reliable, responsive and very cheap to use.