Assessment of patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome--outcome over 10 years using the Sjögren's Syndrome Damage Index.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the long-term outcome in a cohort of patients with primary SS (PSS) using the recently proposed Sjogren's Syndrome Damage Index. METHODS: We reviewed the clinical records of 60 patients attending our Sjögren's clinic at University College London Hospital, who strictly fulfilled the American-European Consensus Group criteria and on whom we had a minimum of 10 years of follow-up (or until death) during this decade. However, we could not retrospectively identify damage in the oral domain as this had not been recorded reliably. RESULTS: Fifty-five per cent of patients in this study had no damage after 10 years of disease--a lower figure than our comparative group of patients with SLE (32.4%). Damage accrual was mostly in the ocular domain, parotid swelling and malignancy categories. There was a 6-fold increase in the 'malignancy damage' compared with the 2-fold increase in the total damage score in PSS. CONCLUSIONS: Unlike patients with SLE, it is clear that fewer patients with SS develop permanent damage, even after 10 years of follow-up. These data are thus encouraging but clearly larger numbers of patients need to be assessed.