The effect of BRT on the prognosis of rheumatoid arthritis

AUTHORS : Gustomesova E.N.

RELEVANT UNIVERSITIES : GUZ OKB No. 1, Voronezh, Russia

YEAR : 2005 | Category : Research

The treatment of patients with rheumatoid arthritis is a very important problem in modern rheumatology. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease of the connective tissue, accompanied mainly by damage to the peripheral joints and the development of erosive and destructive changes in them. The main problem facing specialists treating this category of patients is to achieve not only short-term laboratory and clinical improvement, but also the duration of the effect of therapy.

Long-term prospective observations show that favorable the result of conventional treatment lasts only a few years. Annually 5–10% of patients are disabled [1]. After 15–20 years from the beginning of suffering, most of them develop 3–4 tbsp. functional insufficiency of the joints, and the ability to work is lost [2]. Since the quality of life is one of the defining categories in assessing the effectiveness of treatment, and rheumatoid arthritis in terms of outcome is more focused on the patient’s disability, i.e. on the assessment of the functional state [3], then we studied this parameter on the basis of 3 indices – the index of functional impairment (IFN), the index of severity (IT) and quality of life index (QOL).