Orthopaedic and rheumatology

Rheumatology

Joint disorders

If you only learn about two things in rheumatology (which you probably will), do: Rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. These are by far the most important conditions in rheumatology, and the latter can cause back pain, a common complaint.

Other things that bother rheumatologists are gout and pseudogout. Septic arthritis is important as it is an infection of the joint. Finally, the spondyloarthropathies are a group of not particularly fun conditions.

Connective tissue diseases

This is tissue paper. It is different from connective tissue. For instance, treatments for sarcoidosis (a connective tissue disorder) are unlikely to work with disorders of tissue paper (e.g tearing). It would probably be a waste of NHS resources as well.

So let's get it out of the way systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), lupus or magic House disease is a connective tissue disease. Sarcoidosis is another connective tissue disease which, much like magic House disease, has approximately 250,473 different clinical features. Finally, vasculitis is an inflammation of blood vessels (which are kind of connective tissue. Kind of.

Muscle disorders

Polymyositis and dermatomyositis are forms of muscle inflammation. Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome, usually a diagnosis of exclusion. Polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) is a chronic form of muscle inflammation, also a diagnosis of exclusion.

Bone disorders

These bones are not in the right order. It should be "1,2,3". In fact, they are in "disorder". As such, this is a (poor) example of a 'bone disorder'. This particular type is incredibly rare.

Unfortunately, I don't know where else to put bone disease so it's going to go here. It'd kind of related to muscles, joints and er, connective tissue. Yeah. Anyway here's some diseases:

Osteoporosis - really important. LEARN!
Paget's disease of bone - there are two types of Paget's disease. Learn this one if you want to know more about bones.

Orthopaedics

This is the management of, usually mechanical, injuries to the joints and bones. If you like DIY, there's a high chance you'll like this specialty as much of it is surgical and involving hammers, chisels and drills, particularly for big joints. As such, orthopaedics can pretty much be split up based on the joints that have been injured or aren't working:

The other obvious condition is fractures. General principles of fracture management is a helpful one for dealing with these generally.