Medical Report
Children suffering from Rheumatismare often not diagnosed correctly
„Rheumatism“ is a generic tern for many joint diseases. rheumatism is seen as a disease of old people, for this – although we are living in the new year-thousand – many and youth are false or far too late diagnosed with it.
Most rheumatic diseases start in adult stage, but some forms are typical for children. Additional, about 5 – 10% of all students see a doctor because of joint diseases once.
Group 1:
Most of those symptoms are caused by not inflammable, mechanical reasons, for example injuries, hypermobility, burnout or Osteochondrosen. Non-mechanical caused reasons could be pain because of natural growing, Fibromyalgie and Schmerzamplifikations – syndromes.
Group 2:
The next frequent causes for joint pain are acute, inflammable joint illnesses, which could be:
1. Coxitis fugax (Hüftschnupfen): Is the most spread temporary joint inflammation with children aged 3 to 10. This disease mostly cures without leaving any permanent harms, but, especially at the beginning it is hard to separate it from serious illnesses of the hips and it requires often exact checks to do so.
2. Reactive Arthritis: Following stomach or bowel diseases, or illnesses of the chest caused by viruses or bacteria, after a few days or weeks the so-called postconstageous or reactive Arthritis is developed. The appearing inflammable swellings and overheat of the joints can vanish soon or last for a while and be very painful. But most of those types heal completely and without leaving damages.
3. Lyme-Arthritis or Borrelia-Arthritis: Borrelies transferred by tick-bites can cause the inflammation of one or more joints. After the proof, that borrelies are the reason, the disease can be perfectly cured with the help of antibiotic medication.
Group 3:
Chronical and inflamed joint diseases in the childhood and juvenile age are “rheumatic diseases” really; lately they are called “Juvenile idiopathic Arthritis” (JIA). In Austria every year 200 – 250 children and youth develop a form of JIA. At the moment there are about 1000 children and juveniles who are medically treated because of a form of JIA.
Those diseases are often diagnosed too late, false or even not at all. Recording to a research of Ivan Foeldvari in the Journal of Rheumatology 2002, children and teens suffering from juvenile idiopathic Arthritis have seen a doctor about 4.1 month after the outbreak of the disease, but on the average it took 11.6 month until they were sent to a juvenile Rheumatology centre. It is not only regrettable that the concerned young patients have to suffer for so long, also the chance of a early diagnosis has been wasted. The earlier the diagnose is made, the better is the basis to control the painful, rheumatic disease with medical treatment, physio- and ergotherapy. Although this handling can not cure rheumatism, there is a spontaneous healing rate of 50 – 70 percent until the end of puberty, if the illness was developed before the seventh birthday. So the main goal is a early diagnosis, a soon start of a treatment with inflammation – stopping medication and professional physio- and ergotherapy including the parents help. This way it is possible to avoid, stop or at least ease damages of the joints and muscles.
Rheuma-Ambulanz
Immunologische
Ambulanz
Prim. Univ. Prof. Dr. W. Kaulfersch
Abt. f. Kinder- und Jugendheilkunde
IA 014
B 018
LKH Klagenfurt