Group items tagged

Here is a handout to help educate a patient about rheumatoid arthritis.

Videos with people and their experience with OT for RA

This webpage gives examples of exercises that can be used while avoiding contraindications for patients with RA.

This is a great website that describes the different types of arthritis.

This site provides articles and recourses for dealing with general arthritis, Rheumatoid, JRA, and Osteoarthritis. Under "treatments" it lists all types of medical and supplemental ways of treating arthritis. I thought that was neat. The Arthritis Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention, control and cure of arthritis in the United States.

I found this study on the AJOT archives, its an old study but I just found it interesting in talking about the difference they saw in soft vs hard splints for RA patients. The overall preference for patients were the soft splints.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical effectiveness of static resting splints in an early RA population. The study hypothesis was that there would be a difference in the change of hand function after 12 months in patients with early RA who received standardized occupational therapy plus static resting splints compared with standardized occupational therapy alone.

A computer software concept has been developed that will enable clinicians with no experience in Computer Aided Design (CAD) to design and make custom-made 3D printed wrist splints for rheumatoid arthritis sufferers. The 3D printed splints are not only more comfortable and attractive but potentially cheaper than the current ones that are 'ugly, bulky, and can make a patients arm sweat'.

What a great idea. So many things are being done/accomplished due to 3-D printing. I can only imagine what our future holds in the area.

This video includes a woman with RA. It shows her hands and she talks about things she's done to try to control the RA. It also gives other basic information about treatments.

We have been debating a lot lately if it is okay to use heat with patients who have RA or not. I have found several articles on the subject, none indicating that you can NEVER use heat. This article does state that heat shouldn't be used when inflammation is already present but that heat is okay if the patient is not swollen, has extreme stiffness, and is in pain. The article talks about other techniques to try such as cold therapy and compression.

This article is written from the perspective of a patient. She talks about how she has worn both soft and working splints for various injuries. She recommends getting your splint fitted by an occupational therapists but also mentions tips that would be helpful to consider when providing a splint to a future patient (such as keeping a log of questions or problems).