Audio Highlights and Interviews from Day 2 at the ACR 2018 meeting - LISTEN HERE

Four years ago, the genesis of this session (technology tools for rheumatologists) was from the frustration of the archaic technologies we have been using in our medical practices (including user hostile EHRs), compared to the rapid advancing pace of the consumer technologies we use at home. So came the struggle to adapt affordable and usable consumer technology products in the office that would save time (or at least be time neutral) and impact patient management.

Monday afternoon's session on the treatment of Axial Spondyloarthritis presented us with a great selection of studies addressing important issues in modern treatment paradigm of AxSpA.

Pegloticase has become an excellent option for management of patients with chronic refractory gout, although treatment may be limited by the development of anti-drug antibodies that lead to loss of serum urate (sUA) lowering effect.

RheumNow is in Chicago covering the ACR annual meeting. Here are the highlights from Sunday (day one). Be sure to check our complete coverage, including articles, video reports and tweets, at acr18.rheumnow.com.

During a fascinating gout session on October 21, Hyon Choi presented an important paper (abstract 874) which used data from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study to try to understand the rapid increase in the incidence of gout in recent decades.

During medical training, we were taught about rare diseases that are unlikely to be encountered, but there is a reason why our professors even mention these diseases. It is not just for our board exams; the lectures are for us to recognize the features of the disease when the rare patient comes across our exam table.

We are diving head first into flu season and we need to prepare ourselves. Last year we now know that 80,000 Americans died from influenza.

Dr. Jack Cush summarizes the news and reports from RheumNow.Com this past week and previews RheumNow activities at the upcoming ACR 2018 meeting in Chicago.

Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news and journal reports from the past week on RheumNow.com. New info on scleroderma-SLE overlap, nailfold capillaroscopy, Women with SpA, acute gout management and lupus patient in pain who visit the ED.

MMWR reports that workers’ compensation claims for carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) in California during 2007–2014 were 6.3 per 10,000 full-time equivalent workers, with female workers and workers in industries that manufacture apparel, process food, and perform administrative work being at highest r

Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news from the past week on RheumNow.com. 

Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news from the past week on RheumNow.com, including news on inappropriate opioids, pre-clinical RA treatment, DMARDs in Gout, the decline of arthroscopy, and a pain in the mouth.

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common adverse event throughout medicine and includes both pulmonary embolism (PE) and deep vein thrombosis (DVT).   The cost of diagnosing a thromboembolic event is approximately $4000 - $5550, while the annual cost of treating one case of VTE is betwe

The CDC reports that in 2017, influenza killed and hospitalized more people in the United States than any other year in the last few decades.

Dr. Jack Cush reviews the news and updates from the past week on RheumNow.

The Maastricht study explored the potential association between dairy consumption and knee osteoarthritis (OA), and found that higher intake of full-fat dairy and Dutch cheese - but not milk - was significantly associated with the lower risk of knee OA.

In response to the growing opioid crisis, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved the final Opioid Analgesic Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS), designed to reduce the risk of abuse, misuse, addiction, overdose, and deaths due to prescription opioid analgesics.