Dados do Trabalho

Title

THERAPEUTIC ITINERARIES OF USERS WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS USING BIOLOGICAL THERAPY IN BRAZILIAN PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEM – SISTEMA UNICO DE SAUDE (SUS): LIMITS AND POTENTIALITIES.

Background

Therapeutic Itinerary is an anthropological method to understand sickness process and searching for medical care allowing finding limits and potentialities of health system to solve the problem in the patient point of view. The choice of an anthropological method brings patient to the center and highlights the cultural influence to health, sickness and use of resources of public health assistance system. The objetive is to analyze the limits and potentialities identified by individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) under biological therapy during their therapeutic itinerary in the public healthy system

Materials and methods

This is a qualitative study carried out with 10 subjects with RA using biological therapy enrolled in public pharmacies in Espírito Santo (ES). The material was produced by an open interview, in which, after transcription, the data were analyzed using the content analysis technique, in the thematic analysis modality

Results

It was observed two categories, namely: limits and potentialities of therapeutic itineraries. Limits of therapeutic itineraries were financial expenses and labor disability, and the long way from diagnosis to treatment. The potentialities of therapeutic itineraries were knowledge about the treatment and good access to public healthy assistance system. The therapeutic itineraries of the subjects show the difficulties faced by the patients when they leave the work due to the incapacities generated by the delay in diagnosis and the decrease of the family income. This study also showed ease of access for treatment in SUS after diagnosis.

Conclusions

This type of study is aimed at identifying the pathways that have been taken in response to the individual experience within the SUS, taking into account the understanding of the health-disease process in macro contexts determined subjectively and culturally by patients.