OBJECTIVES: Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disease, it is an important cause for related to disability. Treatment is associated with high costs and socio-economic burden for health care system. Currently, the pharmacological treatment comprises agents for control of pain and inflammation and symptomatic slow acting drugs for OA such as glucosamine sulfate, chondroitin sulfate, diacerein, among others. We aimed to describe the pharmacological therapy used for the management of patients with osteoarthritis and the costs of therapy in a real-life setting.

METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional study; patients with confirmed criteria of osteoarthritis were included; patients were treated with therapeutic goals T2T type and a multidisciplinary approach. Descriptive epidemiology for continuous variables, measure of central tendency and dispersion for qualitative and categorical variables through percentages and averages were calculated. We calculated the costs for the pharmacological therapy, these are presented in US dollars at the official average of exchange for 2018.

RESULTS During 2 years 1991 patients meet our inclusion criteria, 91% were female and 9% were male. Mean age was 66 years ± 9.84. Regarding pharmacological therapy the most used therapy was pain management drugs with 35%, followed by diacerein 25%, chloroquine/hidroxichloroquine 25%, calcium citrate 14% and glucosamine alone or in combination 6%. Regarding the costs for OA treatment the most expensive was chloroquine/hidroxichloroquine $ 1.063 USD per patient/year, followed by diacerein $ 187 USD per patient/year, glucosamine $ 150 USD per patient/year and pain control medications $ 50 USD per patient/year.

CONCLUSIONS Osteoarthritis is a common disease in Colombian patients, thus it is important to provide evidence regarding epidemiological characteristics and costs. Additionally, there is a need to conduct additional studies to assess the cost-effectiveness of other interventions in order to define conclusions about treating OA.