Treating Osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis, unlike so many other diseases, is a clinical diagnosis. Because of the fact that the majority of disease diagnoses are laboratory based, blood samples are often drawn before a physician lays eyes or hands on patient. A perfect example of this is the emergency room patient. When a patient presents to an emergency room, they are triaged by a non-physician healthcare worker. Based on the patient's answers to routine questions, often the triage nurse orders basic blood tests which are run while the patient waits to see the physician. Since osteoarthritis is clinical diagnosis, the workup begins with the patient's history of medical problems, followed by a full description of the current complaint and then proceeding to the physician's physical examination. Typically a radiograph is taken, not to make the diagnosis, but to rule out any other disease or disorder with similar presenting symptoms like Psoriatic or Rheumatoid Arthritis . Now of-course there is an