Managing Painful Disabling Hand Osteoarthritis in Older Adult Populations: Can Complementary Medicine [CAM] Help?

Abstract

Osteoarthritis of the hand produces considerable disability among a large proportion of older adults in all parts of the world. Carefully designed conservative therapies, may however, influence the disease process quite favourably. This mini review primarily strove to document some of the current clinical observations that have emerged to date regarding disabling hand osteoarthritis among the older population and what role complementary or alternate medicine [CAM} may play in this regard. A second aim was to establish if any benefits might accrue in the case of older adults with hand osteoarthritis if they are exposed to one or more forms of complementary medicine interventions, as needed. Using PUBMED, PubMed Central and Google Scholar data bases, an extensive scan covering more than 40 years of research shows a sizeable percentage of older adults are likely to suffer from multiple adverse hand osteoarthritis health complications including musculoskeletal, cognitive, macro and micro tissue disturbances in the hand joints, plus possible neurological and inflammatory manifestations even if they are receiving standard care. There is some support that in absence of any sound mainstream rehabilitation solutions for any of these complex problems, the timely application of approaches based in alternate healing traditions may prove helpful in multiple spheres.