Do we need Early Arthritis Clinics to counteract the excess of mortality in rheumatoid arthritis?

Our analysis confirms this tendency by the direct comparison of a concurrent control group, enrolled from the same setting of the patients, and by using the secure record of the AHD to take for the first time the burden of comorbidities into account. In this way, we specifically assessed the impact of the EAC, in which the intervention includes an early diagnosis and the frequent clinical assessment, following the treat-to-target principle. In a follow-up of 10 years, the survival curves did not show any trend toward an increase of mortality in the ELECTRA cohort. We believe that these findings will support the further implementation of the model of the EAC in clinical practice.