Article Sidebar
Published:
Feb 9, 2023Keywords:
Article Details
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose. AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
Read more here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Main Article Content
Simple Erosion Narrowing Score of the hands as a predictor of cervical spine subluxation in rheumatoid arthritis
Eric Gous
Mahmood M.T.M. Ally
Pieter W.A. Meyer
Farhana E. Suleman
Abstract
Background: Involvement of the cervical spine is common in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and can lead to devastating or even fatal consequences. Currently no guidelines exist as to whether radiographs of the cervical spine should be included in follow-up visits.
Objectives: To determine whether the Simple Erosion Narrowing Score (SENS) of the hands correlate with the presence of cervical spine subluxation in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Method: This was a retrospective, observational, cross-sectional study. A total of 56 rheumatoid arthritis patients with hand radiographs and lateral radiographs of the cervical spine were evaluated. The SENS of the hands and the presence of cervical spine subluxation were compared. The SENS of the hands was correlated with the prevalence of cervical spine subluxation, as was the erosion and joint space narrowing scores of the hands.
Results: A correlation between the SENS of the hands and the prevalence of cervical spine subluxation was confirmed. A higher prevalence of cervical spine subluxation correlated with an increase in the SENS of the hands (p = 0.0002). The erosion and joint space narrowing scores of the hands also correlated with the prevalence of cervical spine subluxation (p = 0.0001).
Conclusion: This study confirmed that a correlation exists between cervical spine subluxation, peripheral joint space erosions and joint space narrowing in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and SENS may therefore be used as a predictor of cervical spine disease.
