Prevalence of systemic sclerosis in Colombia: Data from the National Health Registry 2012–2016

Systemic sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that characteristically presents with fibrosis and vasculopathy. In Latin America, the information on the epidemiology of this disease is scarce and records are essential to know its behavior in the populations. In Colombia, the Ministry of Health uses the SISPRO tool to collect information on the unified national health system which offers nearly universal coverage (around 95%). This public information makes it possible to perform epidemiological studies on different diseases.

Using the SISPRO data corresponding to the years 2012–2016, we analyzed the prevalence and characteristics of patients with systemic sclerosis.

A descriptive cross-sectional study was performed based on the SISPRO data; we used as keywords the diagnoses of the International Classification of Diseases related to the diagnosis of systemic sclerosis.

A total of 11,300 individuals diagnosed with systemic sclerosis were documented. The estimated prevalence was 23.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants (based on a total population of 47,663,162); this disease is more frequent in the age group of 65–69 years in females (77%), and has a female:male ratio of 3.27:1.

This study describes the epidemiological characteristics of systemic sclerosis in Colombia, based on official statistics from the Ministry of Health. The results provide a new vision of this disease in Latin America and open the door to future research, in order to better understand the particular characteristics of this disease in our country and our region.