Treatment management

Treatment Management

Dr. Marina Kang
General Practitioner

I can see that the new medications, the biologics, the DMARDs, they really have helped patients’ symptoms overall. That we shouldn’t really be seeing the deformities that we’re seeing from a long time ago that the damage to the joints can be halted early and we can see too – or I can personally see – that the symptoms, lifestyles, the impact of the illness on their functionality, their work, they can work pretty much like any other normal person without the arthritic condition as long as they can get the best therapy and start it at the best time. The earlier the better.

Suzie Edward May
Member, Arthritis Australia National Consumer Reference Group (rheumatoid arthritis)
Author of ‘Arthritis, pregnancy and the path to parenthood’

Obviously our goal is to have this disease managed as much as possible by medication so that you can then live a very fulfilled life, which is absolutely possible on the fantastic medications that we have available to us.

Dr. Irwin Lim
Rheumatologist

As a rheumatologist my goal is to get a patient into remission or into a state which is so close to that. What do we mean by that is a state where we cannot detect evidence of inflammation, where we can’t detect joint swelling, where the blood tests appear normal. Now there’s a few caveats with this because in doing this I also have to meet a patient’s goals. Generally we want to get good control of disease and that usually takes medications. But from the patient’s point of view the medications obviously carry the risk of side effects so we want to achieve good control without side effects or with as few side effects as possible.

Dr. Samuel Whittle
Rheumatologist, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide

The key to managing these conditions is to find an ongoing form of medication or treatment that can ultimately help us to achieve the state that we want. But that treatment tends to have to be ongoing. So that means we really have to tailor the treatment to the individual.

Dr. Marina Kang
General Practitioner

Each individual who has these conditions it does affect them differently. Their goals are different, their aims are different. As a general practitioner it’s good for us to be able to help them to get to these realistic goals and to help to achieve these goals, and it is different for each individual; whether they be male or female, at whatever age they are. So the condition, though is a generic condition: it is affecting individuals uniquely so we need to be able to see them as an individual rather than as an illness process.

Dr. Samuel Whittle
Rheumatologist, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Adelaide

Everybody’s rheumatic disease is expressed differently in every individual. Some people will have lots of joints involved, some people will have a few joints involved, some people will have very severe disease, some people won’t. Some people will respond to the first medication they try, some people won’t respond until it’s the fifth or sixth medication they try. So that’s really an important reason for our patients to work closely together with us as rheumatologists and also with the GP to find a treatment plan that helps them achieve the goals that they want.