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Instead, the American College of Rheumatology ACR has devised certain classification criteria, and four or more of these criteria must be present for a classification of lupus. The ACR criteria include malar rash; discoid rash; photosensitivity development of a rash after sun exposure ; oral or nasal ulcers; arthritis of multiple joints; serositis: inflammation of the lining around the lungs or heart ; kidney disease indicated by protein or casts in the urine; neurological disorders such as seizures and psychosis; and blood disorders such as hemolytic anemia, leukopenia, and lymphopenia.
Although no one symptom qualifies someone as having lupus, certain clinical techniques can be used to narrow down the diagnosis. For example, a test for antinuclear antibodies ANAs in the blood is probably the first tool a physician will use. A positive ANA test does not necessarily mean that someone has lupus; in fact, one out of five normal women has a positive ANA. Donate Become an Advocate. What is lupus? Impact on Daily Life. Ask a Health Educator.
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This is a problem in medicine that doctors are trying to correct. When doctors and patients think about their goals, they use different timelines. Patients want to feel normal right now. These are topics that should be discussed between the patient and doctor. Although decisions for lupus involve uncertainty, uncertainty is not a cause for frustration or despair. Rather, it is a call for open-mindedness — on the parts of both the doctor and the patient — to the possibilities that may emerge.
Uncertainty is an opportunity for patients to partner with their doctors in reaching for their goals. Dealing with Uncertainty in Your Lupus Diagnosis. By Michael D. Lockshin If you believe the popular press and social media, most things in medicine are both solvable and known. Patients with MCTD have symptoms of lupus, scleroderma, and dermatomyositis all together and a particular, unusual autoantibody. Other overlapping autoimmune illnesses are frequent, but they do not have either official or unofficial names.
How common is overlap? Doctors use these terms interchangeably — they do not mean different illnesses. These patients are ill, but do not have enough characteristic symptoms to make a clear diagnosis of lupus, RA or another autoimmune disease. Doctors say that these patients have undifferentiated connective tissue disease UCTD.
You have abnormal blood tests, but no symptoms Sometimes a person who feels — and is — perfectly well is found to have an abnormal blood test. Most of these people do not have a diagnosis and need no treatment.
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