A patient complained to me: I had back pain for more than 10 years, and I ran to five or six hospitals before I knew there was a rheumatology department today. He is right, the current situation of the development of rheumatism, rheumatism has become an independent discipline only in the past two decades, because it is an emerging specialty, its basic theory and clinical practice is still in the development stage, specializing in rheumatism professionals are few. At present, a considerable number of tertiary hospitals in the country have not yet established a rheumatology specialist, resulting in rheumatology patients often have no access to doctors. On the other hand, due to low social awareness, people’s knowledge of rheumatism is quite lacking, most people’s knowledge of rheumatism is limited to two equations, one is joint pain + rheumatoid factor high = rheumatoid arthritis, and the other is joint pain + anti-O high = rheumatic fever. Not only the general public, but also a significant portion of medical professionals have a similar concept. When it comes to spondyloarthropathies, dry syndrome and vasculitis, many people may not have heard of them. Not to mention the common sense of prevention and proper treatment of such diseases. Rheumatic diseases invade multiple systems and organs, but the first symptoms often appear limited to a certain organ, so people go to the dermatology department according to the first impression, with rashes and red spots, find joint pain, low back pain to the orthopedics department, recurrent ophthalmia, dry eyes, has been treated in the ophthalmology department, and sometimes the best treatment opportunity is delayed. In fact, after nearly two decades of development, our understanding of rheumatic diseases has been greatly improved, and through the in-depth basic research, the summary of large sample cases, and the observation of long-term treatment, most of the diseases have mature treatment plans and treatment ideas, and the treatment effect is becoming more and more obvious, such as the disability rate of rheumatoid arthritis and the mortality rate of systemic lupus erythematosus have been greatly reduced, and the safety of long-term drug treatment has re-evaluated. Now, patients with rheumatic diseases can receive the professional treatment and services they deserve. So, under what circumstances should we visit a rheumatologist? Generally speaking, you should visit a rheumatologist to screen for rheumatic diseases when the following symptoms appear When some symptoms persist without relief: 1. Joint pain, neck and shoulder pain, and low back pain. Most people can recall obvious causes such as trauma, excessive exposure to cold, miscarriage, childbirth causing the above symptoms, or there may be no obvious cause, which may have been relieved by treatment, or may be ineffective and always vaguely or obviously present. 2. Fever without obvious cause, ineffective by simple treatment, especially ineffective by antibiotic treatment and no obvious tumor signs. The management of prolonged fever has been a difficult problem in internal medicine. Rheumatism is one of the three major causes, and the other two causes are infection and tumor. 3, persistent dry mouth, dry eyes, the incidence of dry syndrome has been the first for rheumatism, because it is not generally recognized, a lot of misdiagnosis and omission in the clinic, many rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic sclerosis, etc. can be secondary to dry syndrome. 4.Long-term skin erythema, nodules, purpura, many rheumatic diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, vasculitis, dermatomyositis often have obvious skin changes. It is an important manifestation that we can observe. 5.Multiple checkups reveal that one or several items of blood leukocytes, red blood cells and platelets are below normal. Rheumatic diseases are mostly autoimmune diseases, which can cause damage to the blood system, sometimes as a first manifestation. Second, certain symptoms appear in combination or alternately: such as conjunctivitis, iritis, ciliary inflammation and other eye symptoms, oral ulcers, genital ulcers, inflammation of the urinary system occur within a short period of time. Such as Leukocoria and can appear simultaneously or sequentially eye, mouth, genital lesions, Wright syndrome including uveitis, arthritis, conjunctival eye. Raynaud’s phenomenon: When the finger ends become pale when exposed to cold or cold water, then become red, purple, and accompanied by pain, which can last for several minutes or hours, we call this phenomenon Raynaud’s phenomenon, which can be seen in a variety of rheumatic diseases, such as systemic sclerosis, lupus erythematosus, mixed connective tissue disease, etc. There are also some cases that should be alerted to the fact that they may have little discomfort and feel fine now, but may suffer from rheumatism in the future, that is, their probability of suffering from rheumatism is much higher than that of the general population: 1, psoriasis patients, according to statistics, 20-30% of psoriasis patients can be combined with psoriatic arthritis. 2, blood HLA-B27 positive people. HLA-B27 is a genetic marker, research found that its positive and the development of spondyloarthropathies are closely related. 3, people suffering from ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease. Both of these are autoimmune diseases that often present with extraintestinal manifestations such as arthritis and conjunctivitis. If you have the above conditions, and then symptoms such as joint pain, you should think about the possibility of rheumatic disease. The treatment of rheumatic diseases is not complicated, the key is early detection and clear diagnosis. Because this type of disease does not seriously threaten our health in a short period of time, plus the condition itself may be recurrent, sometimes light and sometimes heavy, so many people just drag on and take it lightly. By the time you can easily find the time to go to the doctor, it is likely that the acute disease has become a chronic disease, chronic disease has become a difficult disease. As long as we have a vigilant heart, timely detection, timely medical care, we can protect our health in a timely manner. Or the saying: health is not even gold.