Deformity in rheumatoid arthritis- an epidemiological study

ABSTRACT

The records of 1169 rheumatoid arthritis [RA] patients were reviewed to try to find out the pattern of deformities among Egyptian patients and also to assess the role of some patient's and disease characteristics in their development. We have noticed that the commonest type of deformities were that of hands and wrists [31.4 percent], followed by deformities of elbows and shoulders [23.9 percent and 13.9 percent respectively]. Study of the simultaneous effect of different factors, by logistic regression analysis, on deformities development in RA, revealed that the factors which have the most significant effect are in order, the articular index score, the duration of illness and the age of the patient