Background/Purpose:

Early diagnosis is important for the treatment of many rheumatic diseases. Little is known about the duration of symptoms before establishment of diagnosis, and if the delay in diagnosis has changed during recent years. We aimed to study the duration from onset of symptoms to diagnosis in patients with RA, PSA and AS using data from DANBIO from the last 12 years.

Methods:

Month and year of initial symptoms and diagnosis, gender, year of birth, hospital and date of first entry into DANBIO were obtained for patients with RA, PSA or AS. Duration from symptom onset to diagnosis was modeled using generalized linear regression. Predicted values represent adjusted mean durations dependent of year of symptom onset. Sensitivity analyses including only patients who had symptom onset less than two (n=4,656) and five years (n=6,663) prior to first entry into DANBIO were performed and showed largely similar results (not shown).

Results:

The figure shows the mean duration (in months) from initial symptoms to diagnosis adjusted for gender, age (10 year age groups), year of DANBIO entry, geographical region and social status. The duration from symptom to diagnosis for both RA, PSA and AS declined steadily during the period from 30, 52 and 68 months in year 2000, respectively, to 3-4 months by year 2011. The patients with valid data (RA: 10,737 (73%), PSA: 1,970 (68%), AS: 1,334 (65%)) did not differ significantly from the whole population, except for more missing data in the early years.

Conclusion:

Since 2000, a dramatic reduction in the duration from symptoms to diagnosis was observed, probably reflecting a stronger awareness of the importance of early diagnosis.