Ehizogie Edigin, MD: Outpatient Care Helps Reduce Hospitalizations for SLE Flare

"The most important factor in most rheumatological disease is what you're doing in outpatient," Ehizogie Edigin, MD, Internal Medicine, John H Stroger Jr Hospital of Cook County, said.

A patient with lupus should be seeing their rheumatologist regularly in an outpatient setting in order to be on appropriate medication and monitor their labs periodically, Edigin explained. If patients are receiving adequate care in the outpatient setting, it's very unlikely that they'll need to be hospitalized for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) flare.

Edigin presented a study at the American College of Rheumatology 2021 Convergence that revealed some promising results. His study was titled, "Hospitalization for SLE Flare has Reduced over 2 Decades in the United States: A Longitudinal Population-based Study".

"It lets us know that the advances that we're making in lupus in the last two decades have, actually, possibly positively reflected in terms of reduction in incidental hospitalization, primarily because of lupus," Edigin said.

Edigin believes that this trend of decreasing hospitalizations for SLE flare will continue. In addition to new FDA approved treatments that are now available such as belimumab(Benlysta), anifrolumab-fnia (Saphnelo), and voclosporin (Lupkynis), more clinical trials are being conducted and the general awareness of lupus is growing.

"What I wish for most is for there to be less racial disparity in this trend," Edigin shared. "I want to see an overall decreasing trend of hospitalization among all racial groups, rather than seeing a generally decreased trend, but among the minorities, such as African American, who have increased trends in their hospitalizations.