Treatment
The treatment of JIA is best undertaken by an experienced team of health professionals, including pediatric rheumatologists, nurse specialists, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists. Many others in the wider health and school communities also have valuable roles to play, such as ophthalmologists, dentists, orthopaedic surgeons, school nurses and teachers, careers advisors and, of course local general practitioners, paediatricians and rheumatologists. It is essential that every effort is made to involve the affected child and their family in disease education and balanced treatment decisions.
The major emphasis of treatment for JIA is to help the child regain normal level of physical and social activities. This is accomplished with the use of physical therapy, pain management strategies and social support.
There have been very beneficial advances in drug treatment over the last 20 years. Most children are treated with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and intra-articular corticosteroid injections. Methotrexate is a powerful drug which helps suppress joint inflammation in the majority of JIA patients with polyarthritis (though less useful in systemic arthritis). Newer drugs have been developed recently, such as TNF alpha blockers, such as etanercept. There is no controlled evidence to support the use of alternative remedies such as specific dietary exclusions, homeopathic treatment or acupuncture. However, an increased consumption of omega-3 fatty acids proved to be beneficial in two small studies.
Celecoxib has been found effective in one study.
Other aspects of managing JIA include physical and occupational therapy. Therapists can recommend the best exercise and also make protective equipment. Moreover, the child may require the use of special supports, ambulatory devices or splints to help them ambulate and function normally.
Surgery is only used to treat the most severe cases of JIA. In all cases, surgery is used to remove scars and improve joint function.
Home remedies that may help JIA includes getting regular exercises to increase muscle strength and joint flexibility. Swimming is perhaps the best activity for all children with JIA. Stiffness and swelling can also be reduced with application of cold packs but a nice warm bath or shower can also improve joint mobility.
Read more about this topic: Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“To me, nothing can be more important than giving children books, It’s better to be giving books to children than drug treatment to them when they’re 15 years old. Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn’t have to put them in prisons?”
—Fran Lebowitz (20th century)
“[17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child’s duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)