¹Bengana Bilal, ¹Aridj Tarek, ¹Abdellaoui Selma, ¹Boukabous Abdenour, ¹Lefkir Taffiani Salima

¹University Hospital Center of Beni Messous

Background:

The COVID19 pandemic has completely changed patient care with chronic pathologies following the incessant reorganization of care which each time adapted to the epidemic context. This prompted patients with chronic inflammatory rheumatism (CIR) to self-manage and take sometimes inappropriate attitudes regarding their treatment. We have wanted through this work, to know the impact of this pandemic on the behavior of subjects suffering from CIR with regard to their treatments, but also appreciate their position regarding COVID19 vaccination.

Material(s) and Method(s):

This is a cross-sectional observational study carried out on patients with CIR followed in an Algerian rheumatology department or registered on a secure online platform all over the national territory. We collected socio-demographic data from patients and their attitudes towards the management of their treatment during COVID19 pandemic particularly once contaminated and their position front of COVID19 vaccination.

Result(s):

We collected data from 102 patients, the average age is 37±3.2 years with a predominance of women at 57%, 43/102 suffered from spondyloarthritis ankylosing (SPA), 37/102 had rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and 12/102 had psoriatic arthritis (PA). Regarding symptomatic treatment taken by patients, 54/102 were taking regularly nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and 51/102 were on corticosteroids. On the other hand for the basic treatments, 48/102 were under methotrexate and 40/102 were on biological. Among the 102 patients, one third of them has already been contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 with 10% severe forms requiring hospitalization; the one quarter of subjects had stopped their therapies during this pandemic. One third of drug stops concerned NSAIDs and one fifth of drugs corticosteroids, three quarter of patients justified this stopping by fear to be contaminated under these treatments. Concerning the COVID19 vaccination, only 20% of patients were vaccinated, where the majority was apprehensive about the safety and the effectiveness of the vaccine. More than half of those surveyed claimed that their rheumatologist did not educate them about the COVID19 vaccination.

Conclusion(s):

It is quite clear that the COVID19 pandemic has had a bad impact on the management of rheumatic disease patients and their treatments, which thus exposes them to harmful complications, hence the importance of establishing therapeutic education programs in the sense of teaching patients how to self-adapt in this context of a global epidemic but also to raise awareness of COVID19 vaccination.