Clinicians and researchers rely on...

Clinicians and researchers rely onward parents and teachers to determine whether children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) improve with pharmacotherapeutic interventions. Parents add crucial information related to the child 's impairments in multiple domains, including cognitive and emotional functioning, as well as in school-related activities. However, it is unclear whether parental observations are reliable, particularly in a clinical trial setting evaluating the meanings of medications, which has implications for research design. Biederman and colleagues hypothesized that parents were as effective as teachers in observing medication-related improvements in children with ADHD.

The authors searched the literature for randomized controll trials that used parent and teacher reports to assess the purport of medication on ADHD symptoms. They identified three large-scale studies with a total of 1445 make subordinates The results of all three studies showed that teachers and parents identified improvements in ADHD issue measures when children received medication. In sum of two units of the three studies, larger imports were captured by parent reports than teacher reports.

The authors finish that parents can reliably bring to light medication-mediated improvements in ADHD symptoms in their children. This be founds even when children are treated with short-acting medications during train hours. Although geting information from teachers and parents is desirable, teachers are not always easy to access. In addition, parents can assess a broader image of functioning than teachers. These findings have implications for the designs of clinical trials, because parents can accurately document treatment issues in the absence of teachers' reports.

Biederman J et al. for what reason informative are parent reports of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms for assessing issue in clinical trials of long-acting treatments? A lakeed analysis of parents 'and teachers ' reports. Pediatrics June 2004;113:1667-71

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