Articles By Jack Cush, MD
ACR Clinical Guidelines Flawed by Low Evidence
JAMA Internal Medicine has reported that recommendations and clinical practice guidelines from the American College of Rheumatology are often based on expert opinion, but lack rigorous (grade A) evidence to support many of their recommendations.
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Physician Visit Times Vary Worldwide
A metanalysis published in BMJ Open shows that for half of the world’s population, primary care doctor visits last less than five minutes and that the range is from 48 seconds in Bangladesh to 22.5 minutes in Sweden (US PCP visit averages at 20 minutes).
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Prevalence of Arthritis Grossly Underestimated
Researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine have published a new report showing that arthritis affected 91 million adults in the US in 2015 or 37% of the poplulation. Their prevalence estimate is 68% higher than previously reported arthritis national estimates.
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Gout Associated with Work Absenteeism
Annals of Rheumatic Disease reports that gout is associated with higher work absenteeism and thus, increased costs for society due to productivity loss.
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Surgical Decompression Ineffective for Subacromial Shoulder Pain
Lancet reports that a common surgical intervention, arthroscopic sub-acromial decompression is ineffective compared to arthroscopy or no surgery at all.
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Vitamin D Insensitivity in the Rheumatoid Joint
Researchers from the University of Birmingham have shown that while Vitamin D may be effective at preventing the onset of inflammation, it is less effective once inflammatory disease is established - largely because, once established, rheumatoid arthritis leads to vitamin D insensitivity.
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Opioid Crisis Costs US $500 Billion
Reuters reports that the opioid crisis has cost the United States as much as $504 billion in 2015, based on a White House economists report released this week. The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) said the toll from the opioid crisis represented 2.8% of gross dom
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RheumNow ACR 2017 Awards
The Annual Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology is a gargantuan educational and professional event that is on nearly everyone's radar each year. RheumNow had an expansive effort to cover this meeting and you can review the work of our faculty at ACR17.RheumNow.com. But we have decided to take this one step further and today we are announcing our 2017 RheumNow ACR Awards.
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ACR Award Recipients 2017
The American College of Rheumatology opened the 2017 meeting by inducting the new president (Dr. David Daikh) and officers and announcing its 2017 Award Winners. These recognitions are given annually to members who exhibit outstanding contributions to the field of rheumatology.
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ACR17 Good News – Ankylosing Spondylitis and Spondyloarthritis
The following is a collection of AS/SpA-specific mentions culled from RheumNow's coverage of the Annual ACR 2017 meeting in San Diego.
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