(roo'mă-tizm )

[L. rheumatismus fr. Gr. rheumatismos, flux, rheum, catarrh]

A general, imprecise, colloquial, and somewhat old-fashioned term for acute and chronic conditions marked by inflammation, muscle soreness and stiffness, and pain in joints and associated structures. It includes inflammatory arthritis (infectious, rheumatoid, gouty), arthritis due to rheumatic fever or trauma, degenerative joint disease, neurogenic arthropathy, hydroarthrosis, myositis, bursitis, and fibromyalgia.

SEE: arthritis; rheumatic fever.

chronic r.Any chronic arthritis.

desert r.Coccidioidomycosis.

gonorrheal r.Gonococcal arthritis.

inflammatory r.Any form of arthritis in which there is significant joint inflammation, e.g., gouty, infectious, or rheumatoid arthritis.

muscular r.Any of several muscular conditions marked by tenderness, soreness, pain, and local spasm, e.g., fibromyalgia, myositis, polymyalgia, and torticollis.

palindromic r.Intermittent migrating joint pain with tenderness, heat, and swelling that lasts from a few hours to as long as a week. The knee is most often involved, but each recurrence often involves a different joint. Between attacks there is no evidence of joint disease. The cause is unknown, and there is no specific treatment.

psychogenic r.An imprecise term for fibromyalgia.

soft tissue r.Any of several localized or generalized conditions that cause pain around joints but are not related to or caused by joint disease, e.g., bursitis, tennis elbow, tendinitis, perichondritis, stiff man syndrome, Tietze disease.