I have rheumatoid arthritis. Do I have to get those joint deformities? The answer is NO. You don't have to get those deformities of course.
For deformities to happen in a rheumatoid arthritis patient, two conditions need to be fulfilled and knowing them will help know what you can do to prevent this from happening.
Number 1: your disease is the type of rheumatoid arthritis that can cause deformities which means that not every rheumatoid arthritis can cause deformities. There are milder forms that don't do that anyway.
Number 2: for many months or even years, your disease was not under control with medications. Why would that happen to any patient?
For one of three reasons...
Number one: it took you a long time to see a rheumatologist who is the specialist who treats this disease. So you've been wasting a lot of time maybe drinking painkillers or irrelevant treatments in other clinics. Sadly enough, this still happens in many parts of the world.
Number two: you were seen by the right specialist and you were prescribed good treatments but your disease was not responding to any medications. Now this is an exceptionally rare situation these days given the fact that the treatments we have for rheumatoid arthritis now are far more effective and potent that those we had some 30 years ago.
Number three: there were no delays to see the specialist and you were prescribed good treatments that would have controlled your disease, but for some reason you chose not to drink your medicines. This also happens for side effects that you do not discuss with your doctor thinking that he will only push you to use the medicine and will not handle the side effects issue or because of the frustration and negative energy that you get from misconceptions about the disease from other patients on the internet.
You need to know the right info about your disease from your rheumatologist; most important you need to know that although it does not have a radical cure at the moment yet it is a fact that there are medications that can bring it under complete control and can prevent deformities.
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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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