Terminology, introduction, diagnostic criteria, and overview

Abstract A debate continues as to what name should be given to the spondylarthritides. We find no compelling reason to change from the title of our initial text (Calin 1984) and so continue to favour the use of spondylarthropathies or the spondylarthritides. We accept that Fran9ois and colleagues (1995) have made some suggestions towards a new glossary for the rheumatic spinal diseases. They base this on pathology and appear to favour the term ‘spondyloarthropathy’ originally proposed by Moll and Wright in 1974. However, as pointed out by Braun and Sieper (1996), spondylarthropathy and spondarthritis, and even spondyloarthropathy, have all been used interchangeably to describe the heterogeneous group of diseases that have a number of features in common.