AS: if you don’t know what to look for, how are you going to treat it?
by Irwin Lim, Rheumatologist
Many patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis are relieved when they finally get a diagnosis. Relief, mixed with frustration.
Usually, Ankylosing Spondylitis sufferers spend many years dealing with doctors, chiropractors, physiotherapists, herbalists, osteopaths, massage therapists, naturopaths, etc. It’s a difficult condition to diagnose as the symptoms can initially be non-specific and the pain episodic.
Hands-on, manual therapy does feel good, but the effect is typically short-lived and the treatment needs to be repeated and repeated. While this can be good for business for some therapists, more often than not, the therapists themselves are frustrated by the lack of long term improvement.
The amount of training on ankylosing spondylitis (and all common rheumatic disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis) is very poor at undergraduate level for physiotherapists. It’s almost non-existent at a postgraduate level. I assume that this sorry state of affairs would be similar in the other allied health fields.
Again, rheumatologists should be doing more to address this.
BJC Health will start this process. We have organised a seminar on inflammatory rheumatic diseases, with an emphasis on ankylosing spondylitis. It’s titled “AS You See It”.
A physiotherapist I talked to last week remarked that she doesn’t think she has seen many ankylosing spondylitis patients in her career to date. I suggested that she might have missed diagnosing a fair few.
If you don’t actually know what to look for, how are you going to recognise the disease, and importantly, how are you going to treat it correctly?
Dr Irwin Lim is a rheumatologist and a director of BJC Health. BJC Health provides coordinated, comprehensive, and colocated multidisciplinary care to achieve effective solutions for patients. We call this model of care, Connected Care. Our clinics are located in Parramatta, Chatswood and Brookvale. Contact us.
This blog focuses on musculoskeletal disease, healthcare in general, and our Connected Care philosophy. Read More.
Stop Press: For Physiotherapists only. Attend the BJC Health Professional Development Seminar on February 20, 2011. Register to attend and link or join the professional page on Facebook. Our Hootcourse will also be online soon. Details on Facebook.
