7 8 18 19 In order to compare the distribution of joint involvement with established RA, 22 patients with newly presenting, treatment-naive RA of over 3 months' duration fulfilling 1987 ACR criteria were also recruited.
The most common inclusion criteria were a minimum pain duration (81%), fulfilling an established diagnostic criteria (61%), and reporting a minimum pain intensity (42%).
Patients with SLE had long-standing disease with a mean 16.3-year duration and historically fulfilled a median of five ACR classification criteria, 45% had anti-dsDNA antibodies, and on average patients had some damage (SLICC/ACR-DI mean of 2.15 ± 1.81).
Data included age, sex, disease duration, number of fulfilled Yamaguchi disease criteria, immunological profile, systemic symptoms (fever, rash, lymphadenopathy, hepatosplenomegaly, serositis, sore throat), tender joint count, swollen joint count, haematological profile, erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), liver enzymes, and serum ferritin levels during follow up.
In these circumstances, we had to make the assumption that the symptom always fulfilled the duration.
In the event, 38 doctors were successfully recruited and the required numbers for each of the stratified subgroups of gender and duration of registration were fulfilled.
Sera from 28 patients with established treated RA of disease duration 9.28±6.52 years who fulfilled the 1987 revised ACR criteria for the classification of RA 27 were obtained from both the Department of Rheumatology, University Hospital, Zurich, and the Institute of Rheumatology, Prague.
It is reasonable to expect that barriers influence initiation of a HEP session (and therefore frequency adherence), but once a HEP session is initiated barriers are no longer important and duration adherence can be fulfilled.
Assignment to the extremely high impairment group (inpatient treatment) required 3 of the following 5 criteria to be fulfilled: pain duration ≥ 6 months, constant pain with an average pain intensity of NRS ≥5/10, pain peaks of NRS ≥8/10, at least one week absence from school within the preceding 4 weeks and Paediatric Pain Disability Index ≥36/60 [ 18, 21].
Twelve patients (10 women and 2 men with a median age of 57 years and range of 34 to 83 years) with active knee arthritis (mean duration of current knee arthritis episode of 2 months and mean disease duration of 84 months) who fulfilled the 1987 American College of Rheumatology criteria for RA [ 16] were recruited for this study.
