What is chronic monoarticular arthritis? Why is it useful to consider this as a category separate from acute monoarticular arthritis?
Chronic monoarticular arthritis can be arbitrarily defined as symptoms persisting within a single joint for >6 weeks. The differential diagnosis shifts away from some important and common causes of acute arthritis, such as pyogenic infection and acute crystal deposition diseases. In patients with an inflammatory synovial fluid, the likelihood of chronic inflammatory syndromes, such as mycobacterial or fungal septic arthritis, or a seronegative spondyloarthropathy, increases. In patients with a noninflammatory process, a structural abnormality or internal derangement is a possibility.
