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Rheumatology Advance Access originally published online on September 10, 2008
Rheumatology 2008 47(11):1600-1602; doi:10.1093/rheumatology/ken353
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

EDITORIALS

Why do the French get much greater access to anti-TNF than the British? Vive la différence? Pas nécessairement

C. Deighton1 and K. Hyrich2

1Department of Rheumatology, Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, Derby and 2Arthritis Research Campaign Epidemiology Unit, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Correspondence to: C. Deighton, Department of Rheumatology, Derbyshire Royal Infirmary, London Road, Derby DE1 2QY, UK. E-mail: chris.deighton@derbyhospitals.nhs.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

In this issue of the journal, Fautrel and colleagues present a paper that contrasts the British and French rheumatology society guidelines for eligibility for anti-TNF therapy in RA [1, 2] alongside the surveyed opinion of French rheumatologists [3]. The findings suggest that 7% of the studied RA patients were eligible according to French criteria but using the British criteria, only 0.9% representing an almost 8-fold difference in percentages that were eligible to have access to anti-TNF. In addition, separate from any specific guidelines, the French rheumatologists felt that 10% of their patients required treatment with anti-TNF, suggesting that their clinical opinion was more closely allied to their own French guidelines than to the British. How can there be such enormous differences in eligibility between two geographical neighbours? Are British patients having access to too little anti-TNF, or are the French being profligate in their eligibility . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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