Demographic, clinical characteristics and drug prescription pattern in patients with rheumatoid arthritis in south indian tertiary care hospital

Objective: The objective of the study was to describe demographic, clinical features and drug treatment pattern among rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients in a south Indian tertiary care hospital. Methods : In this retrospective study, a total of 789 patients diagnosed with RA were enrolled from October 2013 to December 2015 in tertiary care hospital irrespective of age and gender. Data of the patients were obtained from Medical Record Department (MRD), and all the data were documented in a suitable designed Case Record Form (CRF). The data were analyzed using SPSS 20.0 and Excel 2013. Results : There were 628 females and 161 males with mean age 47.6±12.6 and 47.1±14.4 y respectively. The ratio of male to female was 1:3.9. Most of the RA patients were housewives (66.4%). The mean disease duration was 4.3±4.5 y. The majority of patients (59.3%) had disease duration of more than 24 mo. Hypertension (21.5%) was the most common comorbid condition in our study population. Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) was observed in 10.6% of RA patients. Serum C-reactive protein (CRP) was positive in 89.3%. The majority of patients (87.7%) received DMARDs. As the disease, duration increased the severity of disease also increased. Majority of patients were prescribed with dual DMARDs in combination (52.3%). Conclusion: We observed female was dominant over the male in number and majority of patients had a later stage of the disease probably due to lack of medical facility or financial problems in the lower income groups. We observed that methotrexate plus hydroxychloroquine combination was commonly used in both high and moderate disease activity groups which may be due to a better outcome and minimal adverse effects.