The revised McDonald criteria, issued less than a year ago in December 2017, should allow for earlier diagnosis and treatment of multiple sclerosis, but also could be leading to overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis.
A recent study published in JAMA Neurology found that sensitivity for the 2017 criteria was greater (68% vs. 36% for the 2010 criteria) but specificity was not (61% vs. 85%, respectively), based on a study of several hundred patients in the Netherlands with clinically isolated syndrome.
A highlighted session on Saturday, Oct. 10, at 2:30 p.m. (local time) entitled “Burning Debate: The new McDonald diagnostic criteria are controversial making them difficult to use in clinical practice” aims to shed some light. After an introduction from Emmanuelle Waubant, MD, professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, the topic will be debated by Jiwon Oh, MD, of the University of Toronto and Frauke Zipp, MD, of the University of Mainz (Germany). The experts will take questions from the audience as well as via Twitter. Ask your questions using the meeting hashtag #ECTRIMS2018. Find the session in Hall B.
Five new papers on the impact of the revised criteria will be presented in Hall A on Sunday, Oct. 11, at 8:30 a.m. (local time). Among the investigators presenting are Roos M. van der Vuurst de Vries, MD, from the department of neurology at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who authored the recent JAMA Neurology paper, and Wallace Brownlee, MD, of University College London.