The rheumatologist doctor that heals?

Everyone knows that there is such a branch of medicine - rheumatology, and a specialist who works in it is a rheumatologist. What does the doctor of this profile treat? Most will respond that the joints, and it's true. However, not only the joints are in his competence. This area is much more extensive and deals with the diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory and degenerative-dystrophic lesions of the musculoskeletal system, as well as local and systemic diseases of connective tissue, one of the symptoms of which is joint pain.

I must say that the list of illnesses treated by a rheumatologist is very long and amounts to about a hundred diseases characterized by the defeat of bones, spine, joints, muscles, vessels, internal organs. If the connective tissue of several systems and organs is involved in the pathological process, then we are talking about ailments with an autoimmune mechanism of development. Rheumatic diseases adversely affect the quality of life and often lead to disability. They, as a rule, proceed in a chronic progressive form with periodic relapses.

Most often, the doctor of this profile is treated with stiffness and pain in the joints. Such complaints are numerous and come from people of different ages, so today the demand for such a doctor as a rheumatologist is high. What he heals, we almost know, but now we list a few diseases.

These are joint diseases, inflammatory and dystrophic. The first include arthritis: rheumatoid, juvenile, idiopathic, reactive, infectious, as well as osteoarthritis, Still's disease of adults, gout, Bechterew's disease. Degenerative diseases include deforming osteoarthrosis.

The next group is systemic autoimmune diseases of connective tissue, such as lupus erythematosus, Sjogren's syndrome, scleroderma, rheumatic polymyalgia, Behcet's disease, inflammatory myopathies (dermatomyositis, polymyositis), antiphospholipid syndrome, which will also lead us to a doctor called a rheumatologist.

What does this doctor still treat? Systemic vasculitis - a number of diseases of different etiologies, united by a single symptom - inflammation of blood vessels. We will mention some of them: nodular periarteritis, Wegener's granulomatosis, Kawasaki's disease, Takayasu's arteritis, Burger's disease, Horton's arteritis and others.

Another ailment related to this field of medicine is acute rheumatic fever, more commonly known as rheumatism. The disease is characterized by the development of a pathological process in the heart membranes, usually in children aged 7 to 15 years.

What symptoms do we need a rheumatologist? What heals, we know, now turn to the first signs of rheumatic diseases. They are described below.

• Periodic occurrence of edema and joint pain (one or more).
• Morning stiffness and pain, which are observed daily for quite a long time.
• Limited mobility in the knees, lower back, neck and other joints, which has passed into a chronic form.

So, what is the conclusion about what the rheumatologist is treating? The doctor deals with such organs as joints, heart, kidneys, vessels. After all, systemic diseases affect the entire body, differ in the variety of clinical forms and are accompanied by cardiac, cerebral, renal, pulmonary and skin syndromes. Therefore, rheumatologists closely cooperate with cardiologists, immunologists, pulmonologists, neurologists, dermatologists, nephrologists.