Gout: from international guidelines to current practice. Results from a physician questionnaire

Excerpt

Li et al. recently addressed in this journal the issue of the knowledge of gout by patients and physicians in China, showing a rather poor awareness of its management by non-rheumatologists [1]. Similar data was also recently gathered in the USA by Harrold et al. [2]. The overall conclusion was a profound inconsistency between physicians’ habits and international guidelines, thus suggesting very common care deficiencies in gout. However, this survey was prior to the 2012 American College of Rheumatology (ACR) guidelines [3, 4] which may have contributed to such inconsistency. Roddy et al. [5] had previously provided data giving similar results of the lack of concordance between gout management in the UK and at the time, the very recent European League against Rheumatism (EULAR) recommendations [6, 7]. …