CFS in the NHS

NHS specialist chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME) services in England treat approximately 8000 adult patients each year. Variation in therapy programmes and treatment outcomes across services has not been described. In this project, we described treatments provided by 11 CFS/ME specialist services and we measured changes in patient-reported fatigue (Chalder, Checklist Individual Strength), function (SF-36 physical subscale, Work & Social Adjustment Scale), anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety & Depression Scale), pain (visual analogue rating), sleep (Epworth, Jenkins), and overall health (Clinical Global Impression) 1 year after the start of treatment, plus questions about impact of CFS/ME on employment, education/training and domestic tasks/unpaid work. A subset of these outcome measures was collected from former patients 2-5 years after assessment at 7 of the 11 specialist services. This study was funded by NIHR (PDF-2013-06-011).