Perceptions of a Continuing Medical Education Activity to Increase Knowledge of Vaccination in Adults with Chronic Inflammatory Conditions Among Clinicians

Flu and Pneumococcal Vaccine Coverage in Scleroderma Patients Still Need to Be Prompted: A Systematic Review

“…WHO and European Council recommended urging the scientific community to increase influenza vaccination rate for all people at high risk, to attain at least a coverage of 75% [42]. Sadly, although vaccination remains the most effective measure to prevent severe disease caused by influenza, in some countries vaccination coverage in people with chronic disease is reported to be around 40% [34][35][36].…”

“…A few of these studies investigated the rate of vaccination also in relation to gender [14,26,[28][29][30][31]34,37], age [14,[26][27][28]30,31,34,37], concomitant medical therapies [14,[28][29][30]37], disease duration and comorbidities [26,30,31,37], referral by a physician, indication for vaccination, educational levels [14,37] and knowledge attitude towards vaccination [14,27,29,31,34], vaccination settings such as rural vs. urban [14] and concomitant vaccination campaigns aimed to improve the vaccination rate [26,32,33,35], however these outcomes were variably reported.…”

“…Even more recently, a few studies reported still suboptimal vaccination rates [34][35][36]. Still in 2019 the immunization rate was low, with 29% of 208 patients belonging to three main groups (joint, bowel and skin inflammatory diseases) vaccinated for influenza overall [34].…”

“…Still in 2019 the immunization rate was low, with 29% of 208 patients belonging to three main groups (joint, bowel and skin inflammatory diseases) vaccinated for influenza overall [34]. In the same year Sheikh et al, 2019 [35] detected a pneumococcal and influenza vaccination rate in SSc patients of approximately 20% and 45%, respectively, identifying a lack of knowledge about vaccine guidelines among adult patients and their providers as a cause for such a low rate. Qendro et al, [36] found a vaccination coverage of 42% and 37.8% for flu and pneumo, respectively, among systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases patients, which might include scleroderma.…”

“…Gender was generally not associated to vaccination rate [14,26,[28][29][30][31]34,37]. Sheikh [35] tested a multimodal education activity for clinician to improve the immunization rate [35], significantly increasing awareness on the matter [32,33] developed programs to improve pneumococcal vaccination coverage in pediatric and adult patients with autoimmune inflammatory disorders. Similarly, Murdaca et al, [25,26] carried out a campaign for both influenza and pneumococcal vaccinations.…”