CHICAGO—Can non-drug interventions improve the lives of patients with scleroderma? Janet L. Poole, PhD, OTR/L, professor and director of the Occupational Therapy Graduate Program of the School of Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, addressed this question when she presented the ARHP Distinguished Lecture at the 2018 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting. She discussed the challenges faced…
Systemic sclerosis (SSc), a subtype of scleroderma, is a rare, complex autoimmune disease characterized by widespread vasculopathy of the small arteries and fibroblast dysfunction.1,2 It has been described as a fibrosing microvascular disease, because vascular injury precedes and leads to tissue fibrosis.3 The resulting Raynaud’s phenomenon, pain, skin thickening and tightening, and multi-organ involvement have…