Guidelines for management of rheumatic diseases in developing countries from basics to real-world situation: relevance, need, and processes for development

Guidelines or recommendations help to provide uniform standards in medical practice. The development of guidelines requires adherence to pre-defined norms prescribed by different international organizations such as the European League against Rheumatism (EULAR). We searched Pubmed and LILACS to identify published papers in five major rheumatic diseases (rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, spondyloarthropathies, osteoarthritis, and scleroderma) from different countries based on their economic prosperity and could find a lack of published literature from most economically weaker regions. Similarly, published guidelines in these rheumatic diseases were sparse from Asia and Africa, which are economically developed to a lesser extent than other regions of the world. Considering differing economic realities driving patient care in different regions of the world, unique challenges in certain geographic areas such as musculoskeletal manifestations of infectious diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis, as well as distinct risk of malignancies and other comorbid conditions, National Rheumatology societies should work towards developing more guidelines for rheumatic diseases from regions such as Asia and Africa, while following strictly the prescribed norms for the same. With a paucity of guidelines for such regions currently, an alternative (although less preferable) suggestion would be that major international societies, whose guidelines are widely read and followed the world over, should consider inputs from experts from diverse regions of the world while developing these guidelines.