How Early Should Rheumatoid Arthritis Be Diagnosed And Why Is That Important?

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common inflammatory, chronic, systemic, autoimmune disease for which there is no known cure. It affects approximately 2.1 million Americans.
RA is one of the leading causes of disability.
And, because it is a systemic disease it can cause significant damage to other organ systems besides the joints including the eyes, heart, lungs, and blood.
The prognosis for this condition has improved dramatically in recent years because of the advent of new drug therapies that make it possible to put RA into complete remission. Unfortunately, aggressive therapy depends most on making a correct diagnosis early on so that appropriate medications can be instituted as soon as possible.
A significant barrier to this problem occurs at the primary care level. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis are often not diagnosed early enough, not sent to rheumatologists quickly enough, and a new study finds that sometimes the diagnosis appended to the patient by the primary care physician may be erroneous.
In this recent article, researchers looked at the way rheumatoid arthritis is diagnosed by analyzing the administrative databases used by physicians in Quebec.
The authors of the paper, published in Arthritis & Rheumatism (Feldman DE, et al Arthritis Rheum. 2007; 57: 1419-25), reported that general practitioners […]

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