Rehabilitation for rheumatoid arthritis patients. A controlled trial

For 1 year we obtained questionnaire and clinical measures from 2 cohorts of rheumatoid arthritis patients: 49 experimental patients who were admitted for an average of 13 days to a university-based rheumatology rehabilitation unit, and 43 control patients who received care from rheumatologists associated with another teaching hospital. At 1 year, after controlling for groups differences, the experimental patients demonstrated significant (P less than 0.05) improvement compared with control patients in several functional status, mental health, and disease activity measures.