A Call to Action from the Chronic Osteoarthritis Management Initiative (COAMI) September 2012

摘要

Imagine if the trigger for treating heart disease were a first heart attack, or for treating hypertension, a stroke. For some patients, these debilitating and often deadly symptoms are indeed the first signs of trouble. However, the treatment goals for these and other chronic conditions is to detect and modify risk factors early, before symptoms appear, so that the disease's devastating outcomes can be prevented altogether.Unfortunately, the same approach does not currently apply to osteoarthritis (OA), the most common type of arthritis and leading cause of disability in the United States.1 OA afflicts 27 million Americans-over 10 percent of adults in this country.