Is rheumatoid arthritis a dangerous disease?
Can you die of rheumatoid arthritis?
This is a famous question that patients ask on google
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease. It causes inflammation of the joints. If not treated appropriately, it can progress to joint deformities.
But it is not the joint affection and possible joint deformities that would make rheumatoid arthritis a potentially dangerous disease. It is other non-joint types of affections that might occur in some, but not all patients, like lung inflammation for example. Regular follow up with your doctor will likely allow for timely diagnosis of such problems and timely management with the least risks for danger. Another potential for being a dangerous disease is a long term complication that can occur in those patients who have an intense inflammation over many years that is not getting under control. By this we mean a complication known as atherosclerosis.
If you have an inflammation in your body that is left untreated for many years, any kind of inflammation, in this case, it will be active rheumatoid disease of course, you might get atherosclerosis which narrowing of the lumen of the blood vessels. Atherosclerosis is a potentially dangerous problem that can affect the life expectancy of the patient.
So dangerous or not dangerous?
Part of it depends on how troublesome your disease wants to be and this is
managed by regular follow up with the specialist who takes all the possible
actions to manage your disease.
Part of it depends on the wise decisions and actions that you will make by sticking to your treatment regimens. Remember that many patients don't take those wise decisions unfortunately. Many patients in many parts of the world, will only drink painkillers on their own, or will keep wandering about and consulting nonprofessionals who claim that they cure rheumatoid arthritis with herbs, bee stings, or will allow the many misconceptions and wrong info about the disease that they read on the internet to give them negative energy and frustrate them and make them quit the medications that have been prescribed to them. And, in time, they are likely to really experience the bad side of rheumatoid arthritis and, indeed, it has a bad side to show to those who ask for it.
Please remember that a good part of the solution lies within your hands when it comes to certain preventable complications. So, the best advice here is to keep following up with your doctor and to keep drinking your medicines, and also to avoid the negative energy and frustration that you might get on patient forums on the internet and hopefully you will control and prevent possible bad experiences with your disease in the future.
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Further reading:
Can
you die of rheumatoid arthritis?
How
serious is rheumatoid arthritis?
Rheumatoid
arthritis: CDC
Rheumatoid
arthritis: Mayo clinic
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This post was prepared and published by Dr. Hatem Eleishi. Dr. Hatem Eleishi is a professor of rheumatology at Cairo university (Egypt) and is especially dedicated to supporting arthritis patients with online educational videos and articles about arthritis causes and treatment. He also runs a rheumatology clinic in Cairo and a center for online medical consultations that, in addition to providing online rheumatology consultations, also provides online medical consultations in several different medical specialties by expert consultants from Egypt, Canada and the United States.
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