Nanda Nursing Diagnosis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis, it is a systemic, chronic, progressive, autoimmune disorder that affects, roughly, two million Americans. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic autoimmune disease that has the potential for significant damage to internal organs. But also other organ systems such as the eye, bone marrow, lungs, peripheral nervous system as well as heighten the incidence of cardiovascular events such as heart attack and stroke. When Rheumatoid arthritis is suspected, a patient should be referred to a rheumatologist (arthritis specialist) as soon as possible. The primary reason for medication discontinuation is not side effects. Rather, it is lack of efficacy. The current goal of Rheumatoid arthritis therapy is to treat and control disease before any joint damage has occurred. A rheumatologist can help by making the diagnosis and initiating disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDS) to slow down disease as soon as possible...