Psoriatic arthritis

Diagnosis

In order to diagnose psoriatic arthritis, the treating doctor performs a number of examinations. As a hereditary predisposition plays a large role in psoriasis, they will firstly ask about personal and family medical history if there is a suspicion of this disease.

When performing the physical examination, they will look out for typical symptoms of psoriatic arthritis, i.e. changes to the skin, joint inflammation that occurs in particular in the form of "sausage fingers" and "sausage toes", and nail changes, all of which are typical for psoriasis. In order to distinguish between possible joint diseases and find out whether and to what extent the joints are already damaged, imaging procedures such as ultrasound, X-ray or MRI can be used.