The ICD-10 page on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) website features a countdown clock that shows the time left until Oct. 1, 2015, the date on which compliance with the new code set becomes mandatory. By the time this issue goes to press, the clock will read 90 or fewer days. Time…
When designing healthcare spaces to foster wellness, you should first understand the particular patient illness being served and then determine that population’s fundamental needs. “Providers who serve patients with rheumatoid conditions should identify the range of clinical presentations specific to their patient population,” advises Sharon E. Woodworth, AIA, ACHA, EDAC, Healthcare Practice Leader, Perkins+Will Architects,…
In late February 2011, a 68-year-old woman visited the rheumatology outpatient clinic. She had been congenitally healthy and had been a field athlete in her early days. Beginning in early January 2011, she became aware of pain in her neck and both shoulders, with pain spreading to her lower back and thighs. She also became…
CHICAGO—Scleroderma patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) might benefit from more aggressive therapy, an expert in the field said in a session on lung involvement in rheumatic diseases at the American College of Rheumatology’s 2015 State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in May. Newer trials—the SERAPHIN trial on macitentan, GRIPHON on selexipag, and AMBITION on an ambrisentan/tadalafil combination—show…
CHICAGO—A 49-year-old woman has had RA for eight years. She has a rheumatoid factor reading of 35, an aCCP reading of 160, erythrocyte sedimentation rate of 42, plus erosions. She has been on methotrexate. She tried etanercept for six months, but then it stopped working. She was on 40 mg of adalimumab weekly, but it…
Arthritis Center Renamed to Honor Ephraim P. Engleman, MD Ephraim P. Engleman, MD, has been on the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) since 1947, 10 years after he received his MD from Columbia University. The 104-year-old rheumatologist is currently the director of the Rosalind Russell/Ephraim P. Engleman Rheumatology Research Center, which…
PSOLAR, the Psoriasis Longitudinal Assessment and Registry, is a multicenter, longitudinal, intercontinental, disease-based registry used to identify adverse events from commonly used psoriasis drugs.1 An evaluation of the risk of serious infection from systemic psoriasis treatments was recently published using data from PSOLAR. Ninety-three institutional review boards or ethics committees reported into the registry from…
Full disclosure: I am not a rabid fan of dogs. None rank among my best friends. Perhaps my antipathy stems from a memorable childhood event, when I was chased down the street where I lived by a neighbor’s large and not-so-friendly hound. He seemed to be twice my size, and this explains why I may…
NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Dose optimization of infliximab is needed much earlier in ulcerative colitis than in Crohn’s disease, a single-center retrospective study reveals. “We compared the rates of dose increases over a fairly lengthy period of time,” said Dr. Mark Silverberg, the study’s senior author from the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. “Patients with ulcerative…
At the 2015 meeting of the European League Against Rheumatism in June, multiple studies were presented comparing the use of different biosimilar and biologic drugs in treating rheumatoid arthritis…