Anaesthesia for the adult patient with rheumatoid arthritis

medical treatises around 400 yr B.C.; at that time ‘gout’ was used to describe all types of arthritis. However, the first description of rheumatoid arthritis in the medical literature is generally accorded to Augustin Jacob Landré-Beauvais in 1800 who described rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as ‘asthenic gout’ which exhibits several distinctive features, including predominance in women, a chronic course, involvement of many joints from the onset and a decline in general health. RA is now known to be a chronic systemic inflammatory disorder characterized by deforming symmetrical polyarthritis of varying extent and severity, associated with synovitis of joint and tendon sheaths, articular cartilage loss and erosion of juxta-articular bone. Still’s disease is the commonest type of juvenile chronic arthritis affecting children. This article will focus on adult patients with RA presenting for anaesthesia and surgery.