Measurement of Disease Activity in Ecuadorian Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis: Does RAPID3 Correlate with Traditional Indexes?

Abstract

Objective

The aim of this study is to demonstrate if routine assessment of patient index data 3 has a correlation with disease's activity as much as disease activity score 28, clinical disease activity index, and simplified disease activity index in Ecuadorian patients with rheumatoid arthritis seen in Unidad de Enfermedades Reumáticas y Autoinmunes [UNERA] from December 2016 to December 2017.

Methods

This is a retrospective study in 200 patients that fulfill the American College of Rheumatology 2010 criteria for diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. The patients were evaluated from December 2016 to December 2017. Descriptive analyses were carried out, also Pearson correlation was used, and, to give a better clinical significance, a chi-square test was conducted. Whenever assumptions of chi-square test were violated, a Fisher's exact test was reported.

Results

RAPID3 correlated best with DAS28 ( r.83, p < 0.001), followed by CDAI ( r.80, p < 0.001) and then SDAI ( r.77, p < 0.001).

Conclusion

RAPID3 is a questionnaire that only takes 10 seconds to calculate and correlates in a significant way with traditional clinical measures that require more time to perform, saving time in busy health facilities.