Arthritis Treatment & Prevention Options, arthritus, arthrits

Conditions & Diseases: Bones, Muscles & Joints

Arthritis

Treatment Options

Treatment options for arthritis include:

I. Physical Exercises:

Exercise is essential to keep the joints healthy and fully mobile. Exercise to joints strengthens the surrounding muscles and helps in supporting the joints. Joint movement also helps in transporting nutrients and waste products to and from the cartilage.

Range of motion exercises: These are gentle stretching exercises required to be done daily to help keep the joints fully mobile and prevent stiffness and deformities. Intense or chronic pain can subside by carrying out these exercises by patients suffering from arthritis.
Strengthening Exercises: These help increase the muscle strength and provide support to the joints, making them more stable and lessening the pain. Strengthening exercises include:

Isomeric Exercises: These exercises help in tightening muscles without the joint movement. These exercises are useful when the joint motion is impaired.

Isotonic Exercises: These exercises strengthen the muscles by movement of joints.

Endurance Exercises: Endurance exercises optimize the heart rate to target level, which is computed based on age and physical condition. Endurance exercises in arthritis patients benefits them by increasing their physical strength and improving their symptoms (34).

II. Medications:

Analgesics: Analgesics such as paracetamol and tylenol help relieve pain.
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs): NSAIDs such as Ibuprofen, Aspirin and Naproxen are effective in relieving pain, but patients with a history of kidney or liver disease or gastrointestinal bleeding must avoid NSAIDs unless recommended by their doctor.
Corticosteroids or Steroids: These medications suppress the immune system and symptoms of inflammation. Steroids may be given orally or injected directly into the affected joint. Side effects of using steroids include upset stomach, gastrointestinal bleeding, hypertension, thinning of the bones and cataracts.
Disease Modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs (DMARDs): DMARDs are highly effective and used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune causes of arthritis. These include gold salts, D-penicillamine, sulfasalazine, hydroxychloroquine, leflunomide and methotrexate.
Biological Response Modifiers (BRMs) or Biologicals: These drugs are highly effective in treating serious, systemic life threatening forms of arthritis (Rheumatoid Arthritis, Ankylosing Spondylitis and Systemic Vasculitides). These drugs include Infliximab, Etanercept, Rituximab, Adalimumab and Abatacept.

III. Surgery:

Surgeries such as total knee joint replacement and joint replacement are considered only when alternatives such as lifestyle changes and medications are no longer effective (35), (36) & (37).

Prevention Methods

Only some kinds of arthritis are preventable but most are not. Some of the measures to prevent arthritis include:

1. Maintaining ideal body weight.

2. Prevention from major accidents

3. Appropriate physical exercise

4. Avoiding unprotected sex (to prevent gonorrhea related arthritis and reactive arthritis) (35) & (38).

Arthritis is sometimes misspelled as: arthritus, arthrits, artheritis, and arthitis.

Article by Kona Vishnu, MS
Medical Writer,
OmniMedicalSearch.com

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