Credit score: European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology, EULAR
Rheumatic and musculoskeletal ailments (RMD) are the main causes of incapacity worldwide, leading to important well being care and social assist prices. One of many causes for this growing burden appears to be the variability within the quantity and nature of allotted sources throughout Europe, in addition to organizational elements of well being techniques that lead to disparities and well being inequities throughout nations.
New work introduced on the 2025 congress of EULAR—The European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology—in Barcelona described RMD health-related indicators from all EULAR member nations, collected as a part of the RheumaFacts mission—a examine figuring out potential inequities between nations.
Information have been collected on a various vary of matters, together with entry to reimbursed physiotherapy and psychological care, the chance for sufferers to self-refer to rheumatologists within the public sector, the variety of rheumatology departments and rheumatologists, and remedy availability. To this point, 31 nations have submitted knowledge.
The findings present that the variety of rheumatology departments per 100,000 inhabitants ranges from 0.02–0.9, and the overwhelming majority (70%) have been in non-academic facilities. Inside these, the variety of rheumatologists per 100,000 inhabitants ranged way more extensively from 0.6–8.27. Absolutely the variety of rheumatologists offering care to kids was much more disparate, starting from 4–84. Solely 17 nations enabled self-referral to a rheumatologist within the public sector.
With regard to entry to care, most nations (93%) had entry to all accessible standard systemic disease-modifying medicine (csDMARD), whereas solely 37% and 47% had entry to all biologic and focused artificial disease-modifying antirheumatic medicine (b/tsDMARD), respectively. Nevertheless, all however one nation had at the very least one bDMARD accessible (principally TNFi).
Solely 63% reported accessing reimbursed physiotherapy for RMD sufferers on a continual care foundation, and solely 30% reported accessing psychological care.
Talking on the congress, lead creator Anna Moltó stated, “Inter-country variability is high in Europe, with only around half of countries having full access to drugs and to reimbursed non-pharmacological treatments. RheumaFacts should allow us to monitor this, and we hope we will see inequities decrease in order to improve the overall health of patients living with RMD.”
Extra data:
Moltó A, et al. Inequity in entry to take care of rheumatic and musculoskeletal ailments is a actuality in Europe: first knowledge from the EULAR Rheumafacts mission. Introduced at EULAR 2025; OP0025. DOI: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2025-eular.B1313
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European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology, EULAR
Quotation:
First knowledge from the EULAR RheumaFacts mission (2025, June 13)
retrieved 14 June 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2025-06-eular-rheumafacts.html
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