Patients’ Characteristics
A total of 158 patients were included in the final analysis. Depending on the presence or absence of tophi, they were divided into two groups. Twenty-nine patients were in the tophi group, and the rest in the non-tophi group. The 22 variables of patients, including the demographics and disease and treatment characteristics of the two groups, are shown in Table 1 . It was found that the hospitalisation frequency, disease duration, number of joints involved in gouty arthritis and gout flares frequency were significantly elevated amongst tophi group patients than in the non-tophi group (P<0.05, Table 1 ). Likewise, there were more patients with atherosclerosis, diabetes, hypertension and kidney dysfunction in the tophi group than in the non-tophi group (P<0.05,Table 1 ).