[An estimate of functional state in patients with rheumatoid arthritis].

Publisher: Društvo lekara Vojvodine Country of Publication: Serbia NLM ID: 2985249R Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Print ISSN: 0025-8105 (Print) Linking ISSN: 00258105 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Med Pregl Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: Novi Sad : Društvo lekara Vojvodine

Activities of Daily Living* ; Disability Evaluation*; Arthritis, Rheumatoid/*diagnosis; Arthritis, Rheumatoid/physiopathology ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Middle Aged

Introduction: Rheumatoid arthritis is an inflammatory chronic disease that affects 0.5-1% of the population, many of whom develop disease as working-age adults.
Material and Methods: The aim of examination was to estimate functional disability in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and relationship between radiological damage, disease duration, disease activity, functional disability. The examination involved 60 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, aged (53.92 +/- 7.06) of both genders (48 female, 12 male). The following variables were assessed at one time point: swollen and tender joint count, visual analogue scale for pain, erythrocite sedimentation rate, health assessment questionnaire (HAQ) score, anatomical stage and functional class according to Stenbrocker's criteria. Disease activity was expressed as 28 joint disease activity score (DAS28). Correlations were calculated by Spearman's coefficient of correlation.
Results: In our study 82% of the patients had II and III anatomical stage and 80% of the patients had II and III functional class according to Steinbrocker's criteria. The median HAQ score was 1.25 +/- 0.70, and the median DAS28 was 5.74 +/- 0.98. Poor functional status was observed in 37 (61.66%) of the patients with an HAQ score of = 2. Functional disability in patients with rheumatoid arthritis was most strongly related to the presence of pain (rs=0.338, p<0.01) and to a lesser extent to anatomical and functional stage, disease duration, disease activity.
Discussion and Conclusion: The results of the study show that functional disability significantly correlated with subjective pain score (rs=0.338, p<0.01). We observed strong correlation between functional disability presented by HAQ score and pain but no significant correlation with other common clinical variables used for rheumatoid arthritis patients evaluation such as disease duration, disease activity, radiological damage.

Date Created: 20090805 Date Completed: 20090917 Latest Revision: 20190923

20250114

10.2298/mpns0906273t

19650566