The American Rheumatism Association subcommittee on classification criteria for gout analyzed data from more than 700 patients with gout, pseudogout, rheumatoid arthritis, or septic arthritis. Criteria for classifying a patient as having gout were a) the presence of characteristic urate crystals in the joint fluid, and/or b) a tophus proved to contain urate crystals by chemical or polarized light microscopic means, and/or c) the presence of six of the twelve clinical, laboratory, and X-ray phenomena listed in Table 5.

Life‐table survivorship of 124 patients with polymyositis from the time of their first hospitalization is presented. Acute pulmonary infiltration, most often after aspiration pneumonia, was the worst prognostic sign. Excluding the latter group, survivorship was significantly reduced among patients with both dysphagia and greater degrees of muscle weakness, among adults 50 years or older and among Negroes. No differences in survivorship were observed between males and females, between polymyositis and dermatomyositis or between those treated with and without corticosteroids.

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Preliminary criteria for the classification of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) were applied to patients with early diagnosed SLE and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who are participants in a prospective community study of arthritis of recent onset. Sensitivity of the criteria was 88 % , and specificity against RA was 97.5 ye. Sensitivity increased to 92 % without loss of specificity when high titer antinuclear antibody (ANA) was used as an alternative criteria manifestation to LE cells. These results show the efficacy of the proposed criteria for early diagnosed patients, and support the inclusion of high titer ANA in the SLE criteria.Recently published preliminary criteria for the classification of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) (1) were applied to 25 patients with a clinical diagnosis of SLE, and to 40 patients with a clinical diagnosis