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I'd value comments from any list members familiar with SF-36 in trying to make sense of Campbell et al's study of secondary prevention clinics for CHD (BMJ 1998;316:1434-7) They report changes in several items of SF-36 in intervention and control groups of patients with established rather than new incident MI or angina, and demonstrate statistically significant changes between the groups. What I want to know is how clinically important these might be, even better an example of what one of these changes might be. I'll give three examples where the p value for the difference between the three groups was <0.01. I've simply given means here Domain............Int = Intervention...............Cont = Control ********........Int Baseline...Int change.....Cont Baseline..Cont change... Adj.Diff Physical ..............58.6..........+2.3................57.1...........-1.6......... ..........4.3 Role Physical.........49.7..........+4.7................47.9...........-3.0...... .............8.5 Social....................77.3..........+0.2................76.1...........- 2.8...................3.5 In real terms is this a big deal (and of course I realise that means may mask huge benefits for individuals) ? I'm afraid I'm well and truly blinded by this science. TIA Chris Dr Chris Burton GP, Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire Member of WestNet, the West of Scotland Primary Care Research Network http://www.btinternet.com/~chrisburton/heart.htm %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%