New RA Management Guidelines: A Quick and Easy Guide
New RA Management Guidelines: A Quick and Easy Guide
The Basics:
• Treatment should focus on reaching remission or low disease activity.
• Use the current ACR/EULAR definition of "remission."
• Improvement in physical functioning and slowing or stopping of structural damage are implicit in the definition of "remission."
• For patients in whom remission cannot be achieved, low disease activity defined by a composite measure is a reasonable treatment goal.
Changes: The former recommendation 2 has been now divided into recommendations 2 and 3 to emphasize the importance of defining a treatment target.
The Bottom Line: Clinicians need to train themselves to think in terms of the disease state that the patient has to achieve. Simply achieving any improvement, or having a good feeling about the treatment result, is no longer acceptable.
Target Remission or Low Disease Activity
The Basics:
• Treatment should focus on reaching remission or low disease activity.
• Use the current ACR/EULAR definition of "remission."
• Improvement in physical functioning and slowing or stopping of structural damage are implicit in the definition of "remission."
• For patients in whom remission cannot be achieved, low disease activity defined by a composite measure is a reasonable treatment goal.
Changes: The former recommendation 2 has been now divided into recommendations 2 and 3 to emphasize the importance of defining a treatment target.
The Bottom Line: Clinicians need to train themselves to think in terms of the disease state that the patient has to achieve. Simply achieving any improvement, or having a good feeling about the treatment result, is no longer acceptable.
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