‘Seizure-like pain’ 4.5 times more gout patients in their 30s visiting the emergency room for 8 years

A study found that the number of gout patients in their 30s who visited the emergency room with unbearable extreme pain increased 4.5 times over 8 years.

If you manage gout, a chronic inflammatory disease, you can do your daily life without frequent visits to the hospital. However, it was found that adequate management was not performed, such as a large increase in patients visiting the emergency room due to acute attacks caused by gout.

On the 5th, Professor Hyuna Kim of Rheumatology of Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital and Professor Kyungmin Son of Rheumatic Internal Medicine of Hallym University Dongtan Sacred Heart Hospital confirmed this by analyzing domestic gout patients based on the National Health Insurance data from 2010 to 2017.

As a result of the analysis, the annual prevalence of gout patients increased 1.6 times from 2433 per 100,000 in 2010 to 3,917 in 2017. By gender, male patients were 9 times more than female.

Among them, the number of patients who visited the emergency room for excruciating pain such as gout attacks increased 3.3 times from 6.28 per 100,000 in 2010 to 21 in 2017.

This is significantly higher than the rate of increase in the prevalence rate of gout patients during the same period as well as the rate of increase in outpatient treatment of actual patients 1.7 times.

The research team saw this as a point suggesting that the number of patients who cannot properly manage gout is increasing.

By age, the use of emergency rooms by young gout patients increased the most, 4.5 times for those in their 30s and 3.6 times for those in their 40s.

Professor Kim said, “The fact that patients with chronic diseases visit the emergency room is evidence that the usual disease management is not working well. In this study, the prevalence of gout patients increased 1.6 times over 8 years, but the proportion of gout patients who visited the emergency room during the same period was 3.3 times. It was confirmed that the number of patients who were not properly managed, such as an increase, has been confirmed.”

Professor Son pointed out that “generally, gout is prone to worsen due to excessive drinking and westernized eating habits,” he said. “It seems that this is the reason why young gout patients in their 30s to 40s have increased their use of emergency rooms in this study.”

Professor Sohn added, “The most basic treatment for gout is diet and lifestyle correction. It is important to avoid excessive drinking or overeating and maintain an appropriate weight through regular exercise.”

The research results were published in the Korean Journal of Internal Medicine.

Gout is an inflammatory pain disease caused by excessive accumulation of uric acid in the blood and not properly excreting it out of the body.

Uric acid is a kind of residue from the body’s metabolism of purine, a type of protein. When uric acid is not excreted in urine or feces, the level of uric acid in the blood rises, and uric acid crystals attach to the joints or cartilage tissue, causing inflammation. Patients express that they cannot sleep without drugs if a gout attack occurs with severe pain caused by sudden swelling of the big toe and so on.

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