Samantha C. Shapiro, MD, is a clinician educator who practices telerheumatology and writes for both medical and lay audiences. She earned her medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, and was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. In 2018, she completed her internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship training at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Fresh out of training, she founded the Division of Rheumatology at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin, where she remains an affiliate faculty member. In September 2021, she left her full-time academic position to pursue her main passions: clinical education, patient education, advocacy and international travel. She works with various telehealth services to improve access to rheumatologic care. She educates patients and physicians as a medical writer and enjoys writing for both lay and medical audiences. She is an active member of the ACR, volunteering her time to the ACR’s Insurance Subcommittee.
PHILADELPHIA—Whether due to Sjögren’s disease or something else, dry mouth is a common chief complaint from patients with rheumatic illnesses. Dry mouth isn’t life-threatening, but it can have a serious impact on quality of life. Sialogogues like cevimeline and pilocarpine may benefit some, but not all, patients, but cholinergic side effects often limit their usefulness….
PHILADELPHIA—As rheumatologists, we care for patients who may or may not want to become pregnant. We aren’t obstetricians or gynecologists, but several of the drugs we prescribe for active rheumatic disease can negatively affect pregnancy outcomes. It’s imperative we understand how to effectively counsel our patients with rheumatic disease on the risks and benefits of…
How does a rheumatologist treat a pregnant woman when many medications are not approved for pregnancy or safety data are limited?
PHILADELPHIA—At ACR Convergence 2022, the much-anticipated ACR Review Course featured talks from eight experts. Topics reflected the heterogeneity of our field and included Sjögren’s disease, spondyloarthritis (SpA), osteoarthritis (OA), paraneoplastic rheumatic syndromes, metabolic bone disease, statin myopathy, Raynaud’s phenomenon and autoinflammatory syndrome. Here, I share highlights from this comprehensive, six-hour session. Sjögren’s Disease Sara S….
An ACR Convergence 2022 session provided practical updates on ways to best protect pediatric & adult patients with rheumatic disease from COVID-19.
In this overview of clinical updates in rheumatology in the last year, high-impact studies were discussed, including the GLORIA, ORAL Surveillance and MIRROR trials.
This ACR Convergence 2022 session focused on ways to improve health equity in Indigenous populations.
Elizabeth “Blair” Solow, MD, MSc, and Angus Worthing, MD, FACP, FACR, described the top political issues affecting rheumatology now and how ACR members can work toward practices and policies that help us better care for patients.
PHILADELPHIA—Despite a large and ever-growing number of therapeutic options for our patients with psoriatic disease, it is not uncommon for us come across scenarios in which a patient’s response to therapy does not match our expectations and our shared goals for treatment. We all have those patients—the ones whose joints improve with one drug, but…
PHILADELPHIA—Treat to target (T2T) is a common phrase in rheumatology these days—and a welcome one.1 Many of us are familiar with what T2T means in rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but we may be less sure of its meaning in axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA). At ACR Convergence 2022, Alexis Ogdie, MD, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology, University of…