First meeting for the development of a Consensus of Recommendations on spa treatment in rheumatology - 20 feb. 2025

The need for a synthesis on the interest of thermal cure in the treatment of rheumatism seems useful to the extent that there are many published works while paradoxically it is less and less present in teaching and in recommendations of good clinical practice [Forestier 2022 a]. This work is structured in several stages:

• An exhaustive bibliographical stage already carried out up to 2019, then COVID period, and updating the latest articles appearing from 2020 to 2025. (to be added and shared)

• A methodological analysis where the characteristics of clinical trials are reported on a specific systematic analysis grid for non-drug trials.

• A presentation in front of an audience of university specialists from the different fields explored and thermal practitioners (this stage took place on January 26, 2019 during the annual meeting of the French Society of Thermal Medicine)

• A writing stage which recorded the interventions of the participants from the previous stages.

• A consensus stage on the validation of the different formulations proposed as recommendations remains to be organized. This stage aims to involve:

  • The college of teachers in thermal medicine

  • Academics who participated in the January 2019 meeting and/or other academics representing their respective scholarly societies

  • The learned societies concerned: French Society of Rheumatology, French Society of Physical Medicine, French Society of Orthopedic Surgery, French Society of Sports Medicine, French Society of Thermal Medicine, French Society of General Medicine, French Society for the Study and Treatment of Pain, Non-Pharmacological Intervention Society and French Society of Internal Medicine.

  • Patients or patient associations

[in the premises of the French Society of Rheumatology in Paris]