Welcome back Rheumatology Fans,
I went to Eular! Thank you to Physiquipe for scoring me a ticket for the Friday because it is quite expensive…
Ok, so what is EULAR, well it used to be the European League Against Rheumatism but they changed their name to European Alliance of Associations For Rheumatology which if I am totally honest is a downgrade but fortunately I am not involved in naming stuff.
So off I went to their flagship event at the Excel in London, which is absolutely massive. I vlogged the day but my mic wasn’t working and as such the footage is comically unusable. The exhibition stands are crazy huge and there are an unbelievable number of talks through the day. It makes Physio events pale in comparison.
So what did I learn.
In some ways Rheumatology is advancing at speed, new medications come to market constantly and there are so many options to manage the more prevalent diseases like Rheumatoid Arthritis and Spondyloarthritis which is extremely promising. While this doesn’t directly affect us in MSK/Rehab it means we should have a low threshold for requesting medical review. The aim is clinical remission and as such consideration of inflammatory symptoms new or persistent should be monitored. Think about 24 hour pattern of symptoms as well as the obvious, redness, heat and swelling. This is particularly important around the spine where we are entirely reliant upon subjective symptoms.
In other ways, Rheumatology is still where it was when I entered the specialty (15 years ago shhhhh). There were posters reporting consideration of centrally driven factors in ongoing pain in Rheumatological disorders. This is something I thought was cut and dry definitive, the same with comorbid fibromyalgia and yet, it is still being presented as novel.
There were some good rehab centric sessions related to movement but to me these seem like side shows, entertainment, slightly seperate to the rest of the event. Clearly Rheumatology is a heavily medical specialty and that won’t be changing soon. Now of course, this is not that surprising given the huge role pharmacological therapies play and cynically, the amount of money that is made. Rehab doesn’t have the spending power. The conversations I had were that Physio’s are dissapearing from Rheumatology Departments and MSK are picking the patients up and no one is educating them on the requirements of people with Rheumatological conditions.
This is great for me of course, lots of Physio’s to educate but I am hardly the important party here.
So here we are, most of you reading this will be MSK Therapists, thats my broadest audience. I believe the number of people with Rheumatological conditions will increase in MSK settings over the next few years for the following reasons.
There are not enough Rheumatology specialist physios are the numbers are potentially decreasing
People with Rheumatological conditions are generally less restricted and therefore more likely to pick up sporting injuries and such
MSK Therapists therefore need to be well equipped to deal with this population. Of course I have materials aimed at helping you do this, many of them free some of them are paid. I would love it if you utilised them, especially the paid ones. There are other places you can get this from and I have listed the ones I am aware of below.
ASTRETCH - https://astretch.co.uk/ - Non-medical management courses including practical elements like Hydrotherapy
BSR - https://www.rheumatology.org.uk/ - loads of events through the year of varying relevance to MSK Therapists but they typically involve Physios
https://www.rheumatologyevents.org/ - particularly their SpA Academy is really good and typically free to attend
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