Prevalence of rheumatic diseases in a rheumatology outpatient practice of a tertiary hospital

Abstract

Background: To assess the distribution and prevalence of rheumatic diseases in a tertiary hospital rheumatology outpatient practice.
Methods: This was a prospective study of rheumatological diagnoses of 472 consecutive new and follow up patients over a period of three years (Jan 2011- Dec 2013).  All patients with age 14 years and above whom presented with rheumatology diagnosis were included in the study. Detailed history and physical examination were carried out on all the patients.  The disease prevalence was calculated for each group of rheumatological disorders.
Results: There were 3124 patients seen at the medical outpatient department of the hospital during the studied period. Four hundred and seventy two rheumatological cases comprising of 162 new cases and 310 follow up cases were seen. Two hundred and nineteen (46.4%) were female. Degenerative arthritis was the leading case (45.8%) while connective tissue disease was the least cases seen (4.9%). Osteoarthritis was the leading case in both new and follow-up cases while rheumatoid arthritis was second among the follow up cases. Osteoarthritis had the highest prevalence (4.35%) among the articular diseases, while non-specific low back pain had the highest prevalence (1.79%) among the soft tissue rheumatic diseases.
Conclusion: Degenerative conditions (osteoarthritis and spondylosis) and soft tissue rheumatism were the most common rheumatology diagnoses in new patients, while osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis were most prevalent in follow- up patients. The predominance of auto-immune diseases in females was as earlier reported in the literatures.

Keywords: Outpatient clinic, spectrum, rheumatic disease, tertiary hospital