Treatment and diagnostics of gout: Unsolved problems in clinical practice

Abstract

The possibilities for diagnosing and treating gout have expanded significantly. However, this did not lead to solving the problem of timely diagnosis of gout, nor to improving control over it, nor to reducing mortality in patients with gout. In the article possible reasons of absence of the progress in gout control connected with the lack of usage of contemporary capabilities in diagnosis and mistakes in usage of drugs therapy is discussed. These should include the lack of conversance of medical stuff about sonography high informativity for gout diagnosis, low availability of polarizing microscopy and dual energy computer tomography; causeless ignore of prescribing prophylactic symptomatic therapy, usage of inadequate doses of drugs. Another reason may be the absence of unified concept regarding specific indications of prescribing urate-lowering drugs and choice of specific medicine.