Rheumatism and Rheumatic Ophthalmology from the Prospective of Integrative Medicine

Abstract

Rheumatic diseases are complex diseases involving systemic connective tissues. Although the manifestations of rheumatic diseases in joints, muscles, and other motor system have been well known, the ophthalmologists’ awareness of rheumatic ocular disease is still inadequate. Rheumatic ophthalmopathy often becomes a disease difficult to diagnose that confuses clinicians, those who might neglect the screen of systemic diseases, thus leading to misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis. Therefore, the diagnosis and treatment of rheumatic ocular disease need to be combined with the concept of integrative medicine starting from the understanding of systemic diseases. The section introduces the relationship between rheumatism-caused systemic disease and ocular diseases; classification, clinical manifestations, and differential diagnosis of rheumatic ocular diseases; and treatment of systemic diseases. Thus ophthalmologists can understand and attach importance to ocular damage resulting from rheumatism, clear about the clinical manifestations of rheumatic diseases and rheumatic ocular diseases, clarify the etiology timely, and cooperate with rheumatologists, and thus then it would lead to treatment for the “disease,” rather than “symptoms.” At the same time, the section indicates the establishment of the concept for the interdisciplinary cooperative treatment of ophthalmology and rheumatic department for rheumatic ocular diseases, and discusses the possibility of developing specialized clinic for rheumatic ocular diseases, and standardized system for the diagnosis and treatment of rheumatic ocular diseases.