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P.206 Cutaneous telangiectasia quantification as a predictive marker of vascular complications of systemic sclerosis

jsrd · 2026-06-05 · canonical JSON source

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Introduction Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a vascular disease. Telangiectasia (TEL) are permanently dilated dermal post capillary venules commonly found in the face and hands in SSc. SSc-TEL are markers of vascular injury and quantifying TEL burden may have useful prognostic utility in predicting the presence of vascular manifestations of SSc such as pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH), digital ulceration (DU) and calcinosis cutis (CC).Material and Methods An international multicentre study included physician assessment of the number of telangiectasia across the face and hands (categorised into 0, 1-6, 7-15 and >15). We recorded the presence of PAH, DU and CC and use of vasodilator therapies. Patient and clinician reported questionnaires were completed.Proportional odds logistic regression with telangiectasia category as the outcome was performed using stepwise regression with Akaike Information Criterion for model selection. All variables in table 1 except ethnicity were considered candidate for inclusion and analysis allowed for both linear and nonlinear functions of continuous predictors.Odds ratios (OR) were generated to predict the likelihood of a patient with the clinical phenotypic feature of interest (e.g. PAH, DU or CC) having a higher telangiectasia category.Results The dataset included 404 SSc patients fulfilling 2013 ACR/EULAR classification criteria. Baseline demographics are detailed in table 1.The final selected model for facial TEL category adjusted for disease subtype, HAQ-DI and Scleroderma HAQ DU visual analogue scale scores, with nonlinear adjustment for physician global assessment of health. The final selected model for hand telangiectasia category adjusted for anti-centromere antibody status, duration of RP and age with nonlinear adjustment for age and physician global assessment of health.Higher face and hand telangiectasia counts were associated with a higher prevalence of PAH, DU and CC. Facial TEL counts had stronger disease associations than hand TEL counts (table 2). The strongest association was observed for PAH and weakest for DU, which only achieved significance for hand telangiectasia when adjusted for nonlinear continuous variables (Table). Diffuse disease subtype was protective against facial TEL and anti-centromere antibody positivity was associated with hand TEL.Conclusions TEL presence in anatomic locations (face and hands) has clinical utility as a biomarker for the presence of concomitant vascular complications in SSc. The presence (but not number or site) of SSc-TEL is included in the predictive algorithms for PAH. Work to determine whether telangiectasia quantity and site can form part of a predictive algorithm for the development of DU and CC is underway.Abstract P.206 Table 1Baseline demographicsAbstract P.206 Table 2Likelihood of having higher telangiectasia count based on clinic-serological phenotype in SSc