Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis and Hand Rehabilitation

Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JIA) is the most common form of arthritis affecting children. It is a swelling of the joints that is characterized by heat and pain. Arthritis can be short-term, lasting just a few weeks or months and then disappearing – or it may be chronic and last for months, years or even a lifetime.

It is not yet known what causes rheumatoid arthritis in children. It is an autoimmune disease. In this type of disease, the white blood cells lose their ability to tell the difference between the body’s own healthy cells and harmful invaders like bacteria or viruses.

Symptoms of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis may include:

• Swollen, stiff, and painful joints in the knees, hands, feet, ankles, shoulders, elbows, or other joints, often in the morning or after a nap.

• Eye inflammation.

• Warmth and redness in a joint.

• Less ability to use one or more joints.

• Fatigue.

• Decreased appetite, poor weight gain, and slow growth.

The choice of pharmacological treatment depends on the disease subtypes, disease severity and damage, associated disease, and family acceptance. Still, most often, Treatment of JIA requires physical therapy.

In case the hand is the affected organ, hand rehabilitation can help you keep or improve your hand’s muscles’ and joints’ strength and flexibility.

In this vein, several hand rehabilitation devices have been manufactured to satisfy the needs of JIA patients and therapists all around the world. The only problem is that the quality of such devices differs from one brand to another.

Relatedly, throughout time, the SIFREHAB-1.1 and SIFREHAB-1.0 hand rehabilitation devices have been recommended as two of the best model options available and capables of achieving significant improvement among JIA patients in a short period of time.

First of all, these hand rehabilitation devices act in both flexion and extension to mobilize the afflicted hand/arm. Even patients with no active residual movement, , can take advantage of passive mobilization from the very beginning of treatment, thanks to these devices’ software, which allows for a wide range of therapeutic modification options.

Further,these robotic hands would boost force in the user’s desired direction (open or close the hand/fingers to avoid contractures and promote skin elasticity which will consequently reduce morning pain, swallowing and stiffness).

Furthermore, this home rehabilitation equipment can also give resistance in the opposite direction, which can aid in movement stabilization and hand muscle tone exercises.

What can be seen as the best advantage in these robot gloves is that they promote cheap and easily adjustable home therapy bearing in mind that children are the least tolerant people to hospitals and clinics’ treatments.

In other words, SIFREHAB-1.0 and SIFREHAB-1.1 provide a low-cost, safe, intensive, and task-oriented rehabilitation through home therapy, which can improve treatment efficacy by incorporating the recovery of daily-living-activity functions as well as a home environment alternation.

To summarize, permanent damage from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis is now rare, and most affected children recover from the disease fully without experiencing any lasting disabilities. Still, treatment is essential especially that such issue can be life-crippling for adults let alone for children. Accordingly, as a treatment option children’s parents and physiotherapists can opt for SIFREHAB-1.0 and SIFREHAB-1.1 Rehabilitation Robot Gloves as ultimate options since they proved to be effective enough in treating this particular area.

Reference: JIA