Surgery of rheumatoid arthritis in peripheral joints

The wide range of publications that are the basis of the following discussion highlight the difficulties of scientific assessment of surgical treatment in rheumatoid arthritis. Some factors that bedevil objective assessment include the variable clinical course of the disease, parallel pharmacologic and surgical treatments, the virtual impossibility of identifying appropriate control subjects and imprecision in endpoint measurement. Nevertheless, study design in rheumatoid arthritis surgery is becoming more sophisticated through the efforts of numerous individuals and groups such as the European Rheumatoid Arthritis Surgical Society.