[Treatment of chronic polyarthritis]

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease involving progressive destruction of multiple joints and, in the later stages, significant mortality. Worldwide, 1% of the population is afflicted. Despite new insights into the autoimmune mechanisms during the last decade a cure has not been found, although pain, disability and general suffering can be alleviated via several therapeutic approaches when carefully coordinated. Early use of immunosuppressive therapy with DMARDs (disease modifying antirheumatic drugs), while avoiding their side effects, is critical for disease control. Counselling within a good doctor-patient relationship, with the additional help of physiotherapy and ergotherapy, increases the patient's capacity to cope with the disease. Hand and joint surgery, skillfully performed, decreases pain and disability. Newer strategies of immunosuppression, while encouragingly effective, are only short term. These experimental agents are more expensive, they are associated with side effects and their future place in RA therapy has yet to be defined.