Dr Jack Cush reviews this week's highlights from RheumNow.com.
Burmester and colleagues have published their review of the long-term outcomes and safety issues with the TNF inhibitor, adalimumab (ADA). The analysis included 15,132 patients exposed to adalimumab in global RA clinical trials. There was a total of 24,810 patient-years of follow-up.
Should you assess your patients' “purse-onality? The purse exam is an important part of the physical that can help make the diagnosis and improve patient outcomes. I often wonder if downsizing the purse should be part of the T2T (treat to target) initiative.
Pregnancy complications of anti-phospholipid syndrome (APS) have included recurrent abortions, spontaneous fetal loss, preeclampsia, and premature birth. The etiopathogenesis of these events has been presumed to be placental thrombosis or infarction.
You are in good company if you find the alphabet soup of rules and regulations impacting your practice a bit overwhelming. MU, ICD10, MOC, VBM, MIPS, APM, PQRS, ACO, SGR...it’s enough to trigger fantasies of early retirement among even young rheumatologists. But don’t despair!
Rheumatology News has a novel online report about combined rheumatology-dermatology clinics. In the last several years, there have been a few of these in operation (Boston, Chicago, Rhode Island).
The movie Moneyball is a David versus Goliath tale with the A’s (David) struggling to compete with Goliath teams like the Yankees. The movie pits hunch-driven “expertise” (convention) against a mathematic approach to decision making (Moneyball). Would you trust a big Whopper computer printout of next best drug(s) to give to Mrs. Hawking who has psoriatic arthritis and needs to start a DMARD? I believe most of you would huff and scoff at a
From tofacitinib developmental trials in RA and psoriasis and adherence to T2T in early RA to a rheumatology pearl about dapsone and much more, here are the highlights of what you may have missed on RheumNow.com this week.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International's experimental drug to treat psoriasis should be approved as long as certain measures are put in place to mitigate the risk of suicide, an advisory committee to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded on Tuesday.
The gene mutations underlying inflammasome activity have been well described, but there appears to be variable penetrance among patients with the same gene mutation, suggesting additional mechanisms may influence disease expression.
Vitamin D certainly plays a pivotal role in bone health and immune function. However, vitamin D (especially its deficiency) has been casually observed to be associated with numerous conditions (cancer, multiple sclerosis, depression, respiratory tract infections, immune disorders), poor outcomes and bothersome symptoms.
Reuters reports that a study of 6629 Canadian women with osteoporosis taking bisphosphonates found that nearly one in five had a decrease in bone density while on medication. (Citation source: http://buff.ly/2afb7nj)
Experience is a great teacher. My experience with knee replacement surgery taught me the pivotal importance of the physical therapist in individual outcomes.
With the introduction of ASAS criteria for the diagnosis of axial and peripheral spondyloarthropathy, there has been a debate about whether patients with fibromyalgia (FM) could be mistaken for a spondyloarthropathy, or vice versa.
Ablin and coworkers from Tel Aviv have assessed the frequencey of sacroiliitis, the radiographic hallmark of inflammatory spondyloarthropathy, in patients with fibromyalgia.
You know so much, and they have too much to learn, but limited time and few opportunities make it difficult to share information and fill that gap - especially in a way that will “stick” and be meaningful to the patient. When tempted to give patients 'a piece of my mind', here are some things to consider.
