Rheumatoid Arthritis Lung Disease

Rheumatoid arthritis, also known as RA, is an autoimmune disease where the body's immune system becomes confused and, instead of attacking invaders to the body that cause disease, attacks the joints in the body. Besides the painful effect on the joints, the disease can move beyond this and cause a condition caused rheumatoid arthritis lung disease, a potentially fatal condition.

Importance of Early Detection

• ScienceDaily.com reports that RA lung disease detection has vastly improved due to advances in computer-assisted image analysis, making early diagnosis possible. This means the disease can often be aggressively and appropriately treated. Researchers have found that once rheumatoid arthritis spreads beyond joints to the lungs, it is much more likely to be fatal. This makes early detection even more vital.

How RA Affects Lungs

• According to the Arthritis Foundation, RA is estimated to affect 1% of Americans. Of the people afflicted with RA, almost half may suffer from some abnormal lung function. One-fourth of them, or nearly 500,000 people, develop RA lung disease. RA lung disease attacks the air sacs of the lung. Eventually the structures that support the air sacks become significantly scarred, which impairs the lung from functioning properly.

Kinds of RA Lung Disease

• The medical web site RheumatoidLung.com tells its readers about results of studies conducted about the disorder showing there are a variety of RA Lung Disease.

  The most common forms is interstitial lung disease, or ILD. It is also known as Pleural disease. It is similar to Idiopathic Interstitial Pneumonias and is the. It is the most damaging of the varieties of RA Lung Disease.

Symptoms

• Typical symptoms of the disease joint pain and stiffness with inflammation, shortness of breath, fever, fluid in the chest (pleural effusions), scarring and lumps in the lungs (pulmonary fibrosis), high blood pressure in the lungs (pulmonary hypertension), cough and chest pain.

Testing

• When listening to a patients breathing with a stethoscope during the examination, doctors may notice irregular sounds in breathing. This is the first sign that further tests need to be performed. These tests may include a chest x-ray, CT scan of the lungs or an echocardiogram. More invasive tests include a needle aspirate of the fluid around the lungs or an open lung biopsy.

Treatment

• The fact that the patient typically shows no symptoms until the disease has started to progress, it is urgent that you contact your doctor if you have rheumatoid arthritis and develop breathing issues or chest pain.

  Corticosteroids or other immunosuppressive drugs are often helpful and commonly used to control the disease. The prognosis of the patient is dependent on individual risk factors and the severity of the condition.