How Combined Therapies Can Help Your Arthritis

Arthritis is uncomfortable in any part of the body, but it can be especially debilitating if it affects the feet or ankles. There, it can make even getting up to get a glass of water feel like a daunting task.

Fortunately, you have a variety of options that can treat your arthritis and alleviate your pain. At Arizona Foot and Ankle Medical Center in Chandler and Laveen, Arizona, Kyle Durfey, DPM, and Brian Hiapo, DPM, offer dedicated arthritis care. They can help you find the right treatment — or treatments — to give you the best quality of life possible.

Understanding combined therapies

Combined therapies gained traction for arthritis treatment when researchers and medical professionals found that using disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) in tandem with other treatments helped speed remission in people with rheumatoid arthritis.

Moving away from the traditional model of trying one treatment at a time, health care practitioners started layering therapies together to help their patients find relief faster. 

That’s exactly what Dr. Hiapo and Dr. Durfey do at our Arizona Foot and Ankle Medical Center offices.

Our team works with you to identify therapies that can bring you relief. We then design a plan that combines treatments to give you the best possible outcome. In some cases, using combined therapies can even help people avoid surgery.

What to expect with combined therapies 

When treating foot or ankle arthritis, Dr. Durfey and Dr. Hiapo start with the least invasive treatment options first and scale up as necessary.

Some of the early treatments we often explore include physical therapy, custom orthotics — which are inserts you put in your shoes — and ankle-foot orthosis (AFO), which is a brace that’s worn on the lower leg. In this way, we can provide your foot and ankle with support through exterior means and by strengthening muscles in the area.

If these noninvasive treatments don’t deliver full relief, we can explore further treatments, such as the following:

• Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)
• Stem cell therapy
• Cortisone injections

We will continue working with you to help you walk and move as comfortably as possible. We may find that orthotics combined with periodic cortisone injections are what’s needed, for example. Ultimately, our goal is to find the therapy or combined therapies that can help you feel your best.

For dedicated care for your foot or ankle arthritis, book an appointment online or over the phone with Arizona Foot and Ankle Medical Center today.