European Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine

Introduction: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), also known as lupus, is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissues of the body. Symptoms vary among people and may be mild to severe.  Common symptoms include painful and swollen joints, fever, hair loss, mouth ulcers and skin rash most commonly seen on face. Aims: To determine the clinical profile of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus patients at presentation. Materials and Methods: This is a cross sectional, observational study of 60 cases of Inpatients and outpatients fulfilling the 2015 SLICC criteria for diagnosing SLE in Vivekananda Institute of Medical sciences (VIMS), Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratishthan (RKMSP), Kolkata, during the period of Jan 2017- Jan 2018. Result: In our study, we found that 43(71.7%) patients had acute/ subacute cutaneous lupus rash. 30(50.0%) patients had discoid lupus erythematosus(dle)rash or hyertrophic lupus rash. 24(40.0%) patients had non scarring frank alopecia. 33(55.0%) patients had oral /nasal ulcer. 48(80.0%) patients had joint disease. 19(31.7%) patients had pleurisy and / or pericarditis. Conclusion: SLE is more common among young females in third decade. In our study, most common features were joint and hematological manifestations followed by skin rash, oral/ nasal ulcers and frank alopecia. All patients were ANA positive. SLE patients assessed their quality of life as rather low. Increased disease activity was seen among 80% of SLE patients.   Measurement of quality of life along with modified SLEDAI 2000 index will help in providing better therapeutic management to SLE patients.