Rheumatoid Arthritis: Overview - Health Channel

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Rheumatoid Arthritis: Overview |

Dr. Jose Mena, Interventional Spine Specialist with Miami Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute, explains rheumatoid arthritis happens when the facet joints and discs in the neck start degenerating as people age closing the canal where the spinal cord is running down, affecting the nerves or the spinal cord.

He also says this disease has symptoms, such as weakness, numbness, tingling, and if there is weakness or signs that are leading to spinal cord compression, the patient can be a candidate for surgical treatment.

Transcript

Dr. mana is now in our 3d image wall and he’s gonna kind of give us a show and tell us to what the what joints are affected so dr. walk us through it if you mean alright so here we have the the spine and basically we’re really looking like from the front of you so this is not very round number two this is vertebra number one so we have the seven vertebra in the neck this is basically a looking from the front the spinal correction is running behind this area here all the way down so this I cannot show this from the side view or from the back view but basically there’s some joints over here I call the facet joints and we have the discs and all of those they can start degenerating as we age and they can start closing the canal where the spinal cord is running down so that can eventually affect either the nurse or the spinal cord itself and that can lead you into having symptoms of weakness numbness tingling etc our main concern when we see the patient is the neurological status sometimes when people may see MRIs and they may see that they have a cord compression or they might see that there’s a disc herniation but when we do the exam we’re looking at there’s an intact strength and they have good sensibility when we or sensitivity when we were examining them so if that’s the case we can start treating for the most part of conservative care but in some occasions if they have weakness or they have signs that are leading into most importantly spinal cord compression that it’s affecting the spinal cord remember the spinal cord all the nerves are running there so if you have a compression there everything can potentially be shut down from there below so those patient they will require prompt surgical consultation for possibly a surgical approach you

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