Assessment of two screening tools to identify psoriatic arthritis in patients with psoriasis

Background: Many patients with psoriasis have undiagnosed psoriatic arthritis. Low specificity is found with many PsA screening tools. A new instrument, the CONTEST questionnaire, was developed utilizing the most discriminative items from existing instruments.

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the CONTEST and PEST screening tools.

Methods: People attending secondary care clinics with psoriasis, but not PsA, completed the questionnaires, were assessed for function and quality of life, and had a physical examination. Patients thought to have PsA were compared to those without. The performance of CONTEST and PEST was compared using area under the receiver operating curve (AUC), and sensitivity and specificity at the previously published cut‐offs.

Results: A total of 451 dermatology patients were approached, 35% were reviewed and 27 (17%, 95% CI 12.3–21.7) had unidentified psoriatic arthritis. The sensitivity and specificity (95% CI) of PEST were 0.60 (0.42–0.78)/0.76 (0.69–0.83) and for CONTEST 0.53 (0.34–0.72)/0.71 (0.63–0.79). The confidence limits for the AUC overlapped (AUC for PEST 0.72 (0.61–0.84), for CONTEST 0.66 (0.54–0.77).

Conclusions: PEST and CONTEST questionnaires performed equally well, with no superiority of the new CONTEST tool.