EDITORIAL - Improved lupus outcome: we are doing a good job, but could we do better?

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Journal of Rheumatology

Editorial

Nov 2008

Improved Lupus Outcome. We Are Doing a Good Job, But Could We Do Better?

OLA NIVED, MD,

Associate Professor;

GUNNAR STURFELT, MD,

Professor;

ANDERS A. BENGTSSON, MD,

Associate Professor,

University Hospital,

Lund, Sweden S221 85

Few studies are published concerning longterm outcome and prognosis of

rheumatic disorders, and reports on changing prognosis over time are

extremely rare. There are many obvious reasons for this scarcity of

publications. Longtime followup is difficult to achieve: you need to

establish one or more cohorts and follow the patient in a standardized

manner over many years in the clinic. To be able to provide

information that can be generalized, recruitment of patients has to be

representative for the disorder, and you must be able to characterize

your cohort by established time for diagnosis and validated outcome

variables. To analyze what determines prognosis you need standardized

indices allowing stratification of disease activity, damage caused by

disease, comorbidities, and therapy. Still, given all these obstacles,

longterm prognosis studies are essential for understanding what

happens with our patients and how we can change the outcome through

our interventions. The ideal study has never been published and

probably never will be, since so many biases have to be dealt with in

the real world.

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Read the rest of the editorial here:

http://www.jrheum.com/subscribers/08/11/2088.html

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