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News: Will There Be an SGR Fix This Year?
Rheumatologists should expect at least one more time-stamped extension to the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula before Congress makes any lasting changes to it. At issue is the future of rheumatologists’ Medicare payments, including the federal Medicare Payment Advisory Commission’s (MedPAC) recommendation from last year to scrap the formula, reduce payments for specialist services by 5.9% for each of three years, and then freeze them for seven more years, and the 27.4% SGR cut that has...
Audio: Epidemiologist Discusses Osteoarthritis Among Various Countries and Ethnic Groups
David T. Felson, MD, MPH, discusses his Beijing study that compared knee, hip, and hand osteoarthritis among Chinese to Caucasians in the Framingham study and the UCSF Study of Osteoporotic Fractures.
News: Arthritis in Winter
Researchers now have hard data showing that the number of daylight hours impacts the intensity and duration of physical activity. What this means for arthritis patients is that they, and their rheumatologists, need to find ways to increase patient exercise during the shortened days of winter.
News: Prevalence of Gout and Hyperuricemia Increase in U.S.
Researchers have shown that the prevalence of gout in the United States has increased to 3.9%. Additionally, the prevalence of hyperuricemia was 21.4%, or about 43.3 million individuals.
News: Congress Weighs Medicare Cuts Again
A federal panel’s recommendation to get rid of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula by cutting specialists’ Medicare payments is “completely untenable,” according to Tim Laing, MD, chair of the ACR’s Government Affairs Committee.
News: Oral Contraceptives Show Benefits in Inflammatory Polyarthritis
In a large cohort study of women with inflammatory polyarthritis, researchers have shown that the use of oral contraceptives is associated with a beneficial functional outcome when used either before or at symptom onset.
News: Study Shows Rheumatoid Arthritis Linked to Atrial Fibrillation
It is well known by rheumatologists that heart disease is associated with the connective tissue diseases. Now, researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences have shown that patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are 60% more likely to develop atrial fibrillation than those without RA.
News: For Arthritis Patients, Good Support Can Be Hard to Find
Women and men with some form of arthritis or joint pain believe they receive a different level of support and awareness from each other, according to a survey conducted in April 2011 and published in May, during Arthritis Awareness Month.
News: New Research Shows Chondroitin Sulphate Reduces Cartilage Volume Loss, Bone Marrow Lesions
Using quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers have shown in a small clinical trial that chondroitin sulphate (CS) treatment significantly reduces the cartilage volume loss in knee osteoarthritis (OA) starting at six months of treatment, and subchondral bone marrow lesions (BML) at 12 months. These results were in contrast to a controversial network meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). In that study, the researchers concluded that, “compared with placebo,...
News: Lupus Patients Have More Lethal Form of Kidney Disease
Children and adults with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) secondary to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have a higher risk of death than those with other types of kidney disease, according to a study by Sule et al.
