Dr. Ruderman discusses the risk associated with allowing arthritis to go untreated.
Dr. Ruderman:
You know, I think that it is important to recognize that arthritis in a joint may only be one symptom of a more systemic disease and sometimes you can put up with the pain, you can put up with the stiffness and ignore the arthritis. The danger is that the rest of the disease goes on unchecked, particularly for inflammatory types of arthritis. Ignoring it may lead to other complications in other body organs. It may lead to further damage of that joint that leaves to further difficulty using that joint over time.
Knowing that today we have actually good treatments, both medical and nonmedical therapies that may be able to control both the arthritis in the joint as well as, as well as its impact on the rest of the body, I think that neglecting it and ignoring it is actually a bad idea. It may lead to more problems than you need to have.
About Dr. Ruderman, M.D.:
Dr. Eric M. Ruderman, M.D., is associate professor in the division of rheumatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. He is also a board member of the Arthritis Foundation of Greater Chicago.
Dr. Ruderman graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York, New York. He completed his residence at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and his fellowship training in rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.