Summary: Gout, the most common inflammatory arthropathy, is a completely curable disease, provided that the patient is properly educated and that effective pharmacological treatment is used. Currently recommended treatments for acute gout include colchicine, NSAIDs or glucocorticosteroids. Treatment of an acute attack should be initiated as soon as possible, because its effectiveness depends mainly on the timing of treatment initiation. Choosing a drug should be guided by the presence of comorbidities, contraindications to individual drugs, time from the onset of the attack and the number of joints involved. Uric acid-lowering therapy with xanthine oxidase inhibitors should be initiated in all patients with recurrent gout flares, tophus, chronic arthritis or kidney stones. The efficacy of allopurinol and febuxostat and their safety with respect to cardiovascular complications is comparable. Permanent normalization of uric acid levels can dissolve sodium urate deposits, thus preventing their accumulation in joints, kidneys and soft tissues, in order to avoid organ complications.