What is considered to be a clinically important change for the DASH?
A. The minimum clinically important difference (MCID) is considered the smallest change or difference in an outcome measure that is perceived to be important. Work is ongoing to establish the MCID for the DASH. There are different methods and viewpoints (patient, clinicians) that may be used to determine the MCID and it is important to realize that we are not expecting there to be only one MCID for the DASH. Recent work by Beaton (2001) suggests that a change in DASH score exceeding 15 points is the most accurate change score for discriminating between improved and unimproved patients. This and other indicators place the MCID at, or below, our current understanding of the minimal detectable change (MDC) at the 95% confidence level (MDC95). The MDC can be computed at varying confidence levels and is the minimum change score that must be observed before a clinician can be confident that a change in patient status has occurred rather than measurement error. An individual level change belo
