A recent Morbidity Mortality Weekly Report from the CDC reviewed the epidemic of drug overdose (poisoning) deaths in the USA. Since 2000, the rate of deaths from drug overdoses has increased 137%, including a 200% increase in the rate of overdose deaths involving opioids (opioid pain relievers and heroin).
Tofacitinib has been approved for use in rheumatoid arthritis. While attempts to prove its efficacy in psoriasis have not been successful (http://buff.ly/1R6aRF4), early uncontrolled reports have suggested its potential utility in other skin disorders.
Methotrexate was first introduced in 1955 for leukemia and in 1986 became FDA approved for the treatment of adults with severe, active, rheumatoid arthritis or children with active polyarticular-course juvenile RA.
ACR 2015 RA treatment guidelines were published yesterday, nearly a year after they were preliminarily presented at the 2014 ACR meeting in Boston. After a year of review and revision these have been posted.
Hospital consults – “nobody goes there anymore”, and not because it’s too crowded (a quote from the late great Yogi Berra), but rather because it’s a poor investment of time and resources.
Consult service and hospital on-call is an obligation for many, a lowly assignment for some and an adventure for few.
1998 marked the introduction of citrulline as a unique target in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis. The hallmark article by Schellekens et al in the Journal of Clinical Investigation has since been cited over 500 times. Dr. David Fox reviews the history and hallmarks of citrullination in the current issue of the Journal of Immunology (July 2015).
Highlights of the article include:
Travel can be challenging for arthritis patients. Here are some useful tips to travel smoothly and pain free.
I was methodically signing off on stack of refill requests, until I find one I don’t recognize. The patient is mine but the prescription (under my name) is not. It’s for a specialty compounded cream...
A 2013 study reported that people from Denmark were the happiest. Reasons were postulated, but it was suggested it was because their expectations were so low.
In 2012, a Medscape survey of US physicians revealedrheumatologyas the most satisfying of medical specialties. This came as a surprise to many as rheumatologists see themselves as the Rodney Dangerfields of medical specialists.
Clinical decision-making, occurring at the intersection of the ’art’ and the ’science’ of medicine, remains enigmatic and controversial. In rheumatology, there is little doubt that no area of specific decision-making has received as much attention as the decision to start biologics and if so, which one.
Here are five things every rheumatologist should know about antimalarial medications for lupus.
ICD-10 starts tomorrow, October 1st. Your Coding memory will have to increase 5-fold or more as we go from 16,000 to 68,000 new ICD-10 codes. How this will affect each of us remains to be seen. There’s a lot to learn, and many wonder if this will be the next “Y2K”. While that was much ado about nothing, this has significant reimbursement implications.
The range of categories and diagnostic possibilities is astronomical with the new ICD-10 and its 68,000 codes.
HealthcareDIVE.com has published a humorous piece on 16 absurd uses of ICD-10. Rheumatologists probably won't use any of these codes, but isn't it nice to know they're among the 68,000 code set should you need them? These include:
Rheumatoid arthritis affects women in their child-bearing years and many will face the issue of pregnancy and RA management at some point. Here are11 considerations for those managing RA patients who wish to become pregnant.
Members of two professional medical societies griped about what they view as the Obama administration's inept attempts to regulate electronic health records (EHRs) and shared their visions for the ideal online platform at a second "town hall" meeting here Tuesday.
