What Is the Rheumatoid Arthritis Severity Scale?

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic and progressive disease. Understanding its severity is an important factor in helping you and your doctor evaluate whether treatments are working, what treatments to consider next, and how to prevent progression and damage in the future.The Rheumatoid Arthritis Severity Scale (RASS) was designed to help doctors determine disease activity, as well as functional impairment and physical damage caused by RA.Different doctors use different assessments to measure disease activity. Besides the RASS, other measurement methods exist. They include the Disease Activity Score-28 (DAS28), Clinical Disease Activity Index (CDAI), and Routine Assessment of Patient Index Data (RAPID3). In recent years, these assessments have generally replaced the RASS.The CDAI and RAPID3 tend to be the methods doctors prefer, due to the short amount of time it requires to make assessments, according to research from 2010.DiagnosisRA causes the lining cells of your joints to becom...