Pain Management in People with Inflammatory Arthritis: British Society for Rheumatology Guideline Scope.

Pain is a common symptom in people with inflammatory arthritis (IA), with far-reaching impacts on their lives. Current guidelines on the management of people with IA focus on assessing and reducing disease activity. Consequently, pain is often sub-optimally managed, with many people with IA in England prescribed opioids and gabapentinoids on a long-term basis, despite absent trial evidence for efficacy. A UK-specific guideline on pain management for people with IA is required to resolve this. This scoping document outlines the context and provisional questions for the first British Society for Rheumatology (BSR) guideline on pain management for people with IA. The guideline aims to provide evidence-based recommendations on how pain can be best managed in people with IA (including its assessment, and pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments), ensuring that people with IA in the UK are offered evidence-based pain management strategies. The guideline is for healthcare professionals involved in the care of people with IA of all ages and genders, people with IA and their families and carers, NHS managers and healthcare commissioners, and other relevant stakeholders such as patient organisations. It will be developed using the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)-accredited methods outlined in the BSR’s “Creating Clinical Guidelines” protocol.