Smart Portable Electrotherapy for Arthritic Hand pain Relief

Abstract

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic disease that gives rise to inflammation of joints (commonly hands, wrists and knees joints), resulting in joint pain, stiffness and swelling. It is an auto-immune disease meaning that the immune system attacks healthy cells in patient's body by mistake, causing inflammation (painful swelling) in the affected parts of the body. For this purpose, medicines like NSAIDS (Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), Steroids and DMARD(Diseasemodifying anti rheumatic drugs)are generally used to relieve pain. These medicines work by lowering white blood cell count that means that the body has now less protection against infectious diseases ranging from colds and the flu to bacterial illnesses such as tuberculosis. Not just that, these medicines are also responsible for causing multiple complications and comorbidities, such as cardiovascular, pulmonary, and neuropsychiatric diseases, infections, and malignancy. Other common side effects include high blood pressure, gain weight, sleep problems etc. Currently, modalities (any physical agent used to bring change to tissues for improvement cause in body such as light, heat etc) like laser therapy, ultrasound therapy etc are available as a drug-free solution for relieving RA pain. However, these modalities are limited to physiotherapy clinics since they are not portable, easy to use and cheap thus discouraging patients to use them independently at their homes. In addition, going to physiotherapy clinics on daily basis require much time and money and thus patients find medication as an easy and cheap method to relieve pain instead of relying on modalities.