Prevalence of different types of surgery in rheumatoid arthritis patients: A study based on registry data of Rheumatologic clinic, Rafsanjan 2022

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease that can affect many organs, and due to its systemic nature, it seems that some types of surgeries are more prevalent in this disease. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of different types of surgery in RA patients. This retrospective study using the RA registry was performed on 639 RA patients in the rheumatology clinic of Rafsanjan, Iran, 2022. All patients fulfilled the ACR/EULAR 2010 classification criteria for RA. Demographic information, clinical parameters, laboratory information, surgical history, and surgery time were collected from the medical records. The sample comprises 555 (86.9%) women and 84 (13.1%) men. The average age was 55.08 ± 12.52, and the mean duration of the disease was 7.32 ± 5.94. There was a history of at least one surgery in 252 (39.4%) patients. The prevalence of gastrointestinal, gynecological, orthopedic, eye, ear, nose, and throat, cardiovascular and urological surgeries was 18%, 16.4%, 9.2%, 8.3%, 3.9%, 0.9% and 0.9%, respectively. There were 69.8% of eye surgeries and 57.6% of orthopedic surgeries after disease diagnosis; other surgeries were more prevalent before the diagnosis. The average age (58.16 ± 11.89 vs. 53.07 ± 12.53, P-value < 0.001) and body mass index (29.65 ± 5.68 vs 28.63 ± 5.56, P-value = 0.025) were higher in participants with surgery than those with no surgery. The most prevalent surgeries were gastrointestinal, gynecological, and orthopedic surgeries, and Cardiovascular and urological surgeries were the least. The mean age and body mass index in patients with surgery were significantly higher than those without surgery. Also, physical activity was significantly lower in the participants with surgery.