A plain X-ray film appeared on the computer screen—a humerus, a radius and an ulna were all visible. My pupils zoomed around the screen, and on initial inspection, everything looked fine. However, this X-ray was unlike any film I had ever reviewed. You see, it was for my then 4-year-old puppy, Lexi. My sweet little…
One of the newer state rheumatology organizations, the Rheumatology Association of Iowa, brings together rheumatology professionals, offering connections to fill rural care needs and advocate for policies that support patient care. The organization’s 9th annual meeting will be Feb. 24–25.
The new standing committee, devoted to addressing long-term workforce solutions in rheumatology, will be chaired by Daniel F. Battafarano, DO, MACP, MACR. Dr. Battafarano brings more than 35 years of leadership and experience in graduate medical education in rheumatology and internal medicine to the position.
PHILADELPHIA—“At age 12, I was diagnosed with psoriasis (PsO), followed by a diagnosis of psoriatic arthritis (PsA) at age 30,” said Ashley Krivohlavek of Oklahoma City in a poster presentation at ACR Convergence 2022. “I’m now 38.” Ms. Krivohlavek’s Story In 2020, I had been on an infused biologic for 18 months, but my…
Prior authorization and step therapy reform bills recently enacted in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts offer case studies into how substantive policy change can take persistence, patience and a bipartisan approach to achieve success.
Key successes for the rheumatology community secured by the ACR’s delegation include passage of the ACR’s resolution addressing pharmacy benefit administrators, advances in policies to protect rheumatologists and patients in the post-Dobbs landscape and retention of the rheumatology’s representation in the AMA House of Delegates.
The patient, a 76-year-old woman, had very active polyarticular rheumatoid arthritis (RA), despite triple therapy with conventional synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), low-dose corticosteroids and occasional intra-articular injections—the latter providing only transient symptomatic relief. She had elevated inflammatory markers and a 28-joint Disease Activity Score (DAS-28) score of 7.4. Because of the severity of her…
MoCA as a Screening Test in SLE Assessing the utility of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) By Oshrat E. Tayer-Shifman, MD, Kimberley Yuen, BSc, MD, & Zahi Touma, MD, PhD, FACP, FACR Why was this study done? Cognitive impairment is a common manifestation of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), with a prevalence of 40% based on…
Estimates from the National Psoriasis Foundation indicate that more than 8 million people in the U.S. suffer from psoriasis and that approximately 30% of those individuals develop psoriatic arthritis (PsA).1 Given these statistics, roughly 2.4 million people in the country are likely affected by PsA. Moreover, patients with this systemic condition carry a higher-than-average burden…
I looked at the joints. They spoke back to me—”I need more humanism,” they whispered. To longtime readers, those two sentences may sound both familiar and alien, perhaps even a little humorous. That’s because those sentences were generated entirely by a computer using artificial intelligence (AI). It was simple, too: I just copied the text…