(ANSA) - ROME, NOVEMBER 24 - In Italy over one million people are unaware of having a rheumatological disease due to late diagnoses: on average it takes 7 years to identify a case of fibromyalgia or psoriatic arthritis;
it takes up to 5 years to discover ankylosing spondylitis, while for systemic sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis the waiting years are 3 and 2 years respectively. opened in Rimini.
To reverse the trend, a year ago SIR launched the national "Early Diagnosis" campaign.
100 thousand copies of the booklet "Rheumatological diseases: what they are, how to prevent them and how to recognize them" were distributed in the pharmacies of the FederFarma Servizi network.
Another 100,000 copies of four leaflets dedicated to individual pathologies (connective tissue disease, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and psoriatic arthritis) were delivered to health facilities.
"Through these publications, also thanks to an intense online activity and on social media, millions of patients, caregivers and ordinary citizens have been reached", underlines SIR.
Refresher courses were also held for pharmacists on early diagnosis in rheumatology.
"We are satisfied because we have successfully launched the first nationwide awareness-raising initiative on the importance of recognizing the first signs of disease - comments Roberto Gerli, national president of SIR -. In Italy there are over 5.4 million rheumatological patients to which must be added the people who at the moment they are not aware of their illness. So in total more than one Italian out of ten is affected by more or less serious and disabling pathologies".
Identifying the pathology early, underlines Gerli, "allows us to obtain a real secondary prevention.
We are able to avoid or greatly limit the joint damage, and therefore the disability, caused by the inflammatory process triggered by the disease".
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