“Clinical remission in rheumatoid arthritis is the main goal that each rheumatologist should set together with their client because it is the time when the patient is well, he is symptom-free. It is the state of disease that allows us to achieve the best possible results in the medium and long term. If a patient is in remission obviously ‘weighs’ less on the health budget: he will be less likely to progress radiologically, he will develop fewer joint complications over the long course of the disease “. Roberto Caporali, director of the Department of Rheumatology and Medical Sciences Asst Pini-Cto of Milancommenting on the results of a study published in ‘Advances in Therapy’, from which it emerges that achieving clinical remission in rheumatoid arthritis involves economic benefits, with savings between 19% and 52% of direct medical costs and between 37% and 75% of indirect costs.
“Achieving high rates of remission from the very beginning of the treatment cycle – he continues – can help patients maintain joint function and avoid long-term disability. This publication has collected new observations on the economic benefits of achieving disease control. These results highlight the importance of the treat-to-target strategy in achieving remission in rheumatoid arthritis ”.
“All of us rheumatologists – explains Caporali – have always been convinced that if a patient reaches remission obviously represents a saving for the National Health Service: he will need fewer visits other than rheumatology, he will be able to make fewer visits to the rheumatologist and above all not he will need to change medications all the time to achieve remission. ”
“Not only that: if a patient reaches remission with a drug – continues the rheumatologist – this allows savings in the short term because we will have a patient who has less need to access the NHS services. Besides the fact that he will not have to be absent from work due to illness. An important finding is that if remission persists over time, the patient will be less likely to have access to measures such as disability than to be forced to leave work and have to ask for the allowances that would allow him to live once his job is lost. It is very important to have shown these results in black and white because all this allows us to confirm an option that we have always thought about ”.
In the future, according to Caporali, “we must continue to work in this area – says the expert -. On the one hand, by increasing the number of patients who undergo remission which, it must be said, today we are unable to reach in 50% of patients. How? With early diagnosis and thanks to new drugs that we have available “. In addition, “additional data on the fact that the patient in remission represents a saving could also be very useful for those who control the health expenditure in our facilities to understand if the little we spend more on one drug than another guarantees us in the mean and in the long run, greater savings in terms of achieving remission and all that follows ”, he concludes.