Nonradiographic Axial Spondyloarthritis - Is this what I have?

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Ankylosing Spondylitis Podcast. How's everybody doing here in the Northern Hemisphere, I'm in North America and we're having summer, the heats going and man, it feels really, really nice. I know for you in the southern hemisphere, the winter is kicked in. So in areas like Australia and so forth, you're getting a cooler temperature. So I hope that's nice. I hope you guys had a great summer. And overall, you know, I hope it helps with all of the arthritis and all the issues that everybody's dealing with.

Well, in today's episode, I wanted to delve into a subject that I think might be of interest to a lot of people when they look at the boards on Facebook quite a bit. I see people that say, I know I have Ankylosing Spondylitis. I know I've got it. But my rheumatologist won't give me a diagnosis. I have all the pain. I have all the, you know the symptoms, but he or she just won't tell me I have Ankylosing Spondylitis. Why is that? It's frustrating. It's delaying stuff. Well, I'm going to switch it around a little bit. Say that not in all cases, but maybe your rheumatologist is not wrong. Maybe you don't have Ankylosing Spondylitis. But maybe you're dealing with non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis. Wow, say that multiple times real fast.

What is it and how is it treated? And that's what I want to cover today because you know, it might be that for some when you go at your doctor saying I have Ankylosing Spondylitis, I have Ankylosing Spondylitis, why won't you diagnose me? They're thinking and only trying to look at maybe not correctly, but they might only be looking at the Ankylosing Spondylitis as the possible outcome. And when the pieces don't fit, even though most of the pieces of the puzzle are there, there are maybe a couple of very key pieces that are missing. You walk away frustrated because you think that I've got this ankylosing spondylitis and the doctors just not listening to me and not validating what I feel. Well, that's where this term that I've covered in several episodes recently, axial spondyloarthritis comes in. That's that umbrella term that covers nonradiographic axial spondyloarthritis and ankylosing spondylitis. What's the benefit of me knowing about the difference and let's deal with that because I think it's really important when you think of inflammatory arthritis like rheumatoid arthritis you often think of it as affecting small joints, the hands and the feet. Those are usually the first I think of when I think of rheumatoid arthritis nonradiographic axial spondyloarthritis is a different kind of inflammatory arthritis. It falls under an umbrella category that I just mentioned the axial spondyloarthritis. Well, nonradiographic is a type of inflammatory arthritis that causes lower back pain among other symptoms. There's your exact same symptom that you might encounter with ankylosing spondylitis, that lower back pain, that hip pain, the sacroiliac joint pain, you know, all that can fall into both of these nonradiographic, there are symptoms but no visible damage on the X rays. That's the big key takeaway right there is your rheumatologist could be looking at your x rays and saying I don't see any damage, you know, maybe you have fibro or, and they go off on a tangent because they're not thinking nonradiographic. And that's where you, as the patient have to kind of work backwards with the doctor and maybe walk them and say, well, if you're saying I don't have Ankylosing Spondylitis is nonradiographic a possibility. So that's one thing you can start off with, you know, MRIs can help diagnose nonradiographic axial spondyloarthritis, but sometimes they too can be negative, and that can really, really throw a diagnosis off. And that's what can make this so challenging and so long unfortunately for some people to get a diagnose. The good news is though there are treatments that are transitioning from the Ankylosing...