Inpatient Gout: A Review

Abstract

Gout is the most common inflammatory arthritis, currently affecting over 8 million people in the United States alone. Moreover, gout incidence has been rising for at least the last four decades [1•, 2]. Though gout is primarily considered an outpatient problem, acute gouty attacks are both a cause and a consequence of hospital admission, and gout—whether acute or chronic - can impact both morbidity and length of stay [3–5]. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on inpatient gout, including diagnostic challenges, risk of flare associated with hospitalization, treatment, and its impact as a healthcare burden. Pubmed, EMBASE, and Ovid searches were performed using the terms gout and hospital, and gout and inpatient. Only English-language publications were reviewed. A total of 1732 publications were identified, and, if the title suggested a possible inpatient component, abstracts were reviewed for relevance. We also reviewed the bibliographies of all relev ...