Bharat Kumar, MD, MME, FACP, RhMSUS | Issue: April 2024 |
Providing compassionate care when touch is painful
I am a few weeks post-retirement. Having written thank you notes and completed urgent home projects, I swing in a hammock at our currently fire-threatened cabin north of Winthrop, Wash., and reflect. I feel like a young boy while freely flipping pages of a hand-scribed picture book, The Principles of Uncertainty, by Maira Kalman. She…
Teaching junior learners, such as medical students and residents, is increasingly important in rheumatology. Given the anticipated shortage of rheumatologists, attracting more trainees to our field and enhancing knowledge of the rheumatic diseases among physicians in other fields are critical to meeting the needs of our patients.1,2 In addition, clinical reasoning is a vital skill…
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…