Impact of Nurse-led Programme With Carotid Ultrasound on Addressing Cardiovascular Risk in Patients With Arthritis

Elevated CVD risk is a significant public health problem that contributes greatly to the increased morbidity and shortened lifespan of individuals with RA and PsA. Over the past decades, there has been great progress into the understanding of the severity of CVD risk in these patients but these risk factors are not well managed. The development of the high-risk strategy is therefore necessary, with more intensive therapy reserved for patients identified as high-risk, e.g. because they have high-risk FRS. However, these risk scores under-estimated CV risk in patients with RA and PsA. An intermediate approach is to use quantification of preclinical vascular disease to further identify high-risk patients. Results from this study will provide clinical implications in terms of detecting and managing cardiovascular morbidity in patients with RA and PsA.