The patient medical history is far more prominent in clinical decisions for rheumatology than for many common chronic diseases in which a gold standard biomarker, such as blood pressure or serum glucose, is applicable to diagnosis and management of all individual patients.1 Components of a subjective patient history may be recorded as structured, quantitative, standard,…
Challenges related to diagnosing chondritis are discussed.
ATLANTA—Dry eyes and mouth are common symptoms in the general population. When patients report these symptoms to their primary care provider and other consultants, it may prompt a referral to a rheumatologist to rule out Sjögren’s syndrome. However, as discussed in the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting session, Sjögren’s Syndrome: Beyond the Dryness, evaluation of this…
Patients with anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody–associated vasculitides (AAV) have an increased risk of mortality. But treatments have evolved in recent years. Recent research found that between 1999 and 2017 the AAV mortality rate declined by nearly 2% per year in patients 65–74 years old…
A recent study indicates that depression in patients with ankylosing spondylitis is a result of both contextual and disease-related factors. Researchers found a patient’s mastery—the perception they have control over things in their lives—plays a key role in the development of depression in this patient population…
Guideline authors discussed therapeutic options for patients with hand, knee and hip OA in a session at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting.
Patients with uncontrolled gout may benefit from a combination of pegloticase and methotrexate therapy, according to a small, retrospective study…
The challenges of diagnosing myositis are numerous, with many tests resulting in false positives and negatives for autoantibody levels. Researchers recently compared a line blot array currently being used in research with the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation Myositis panel, which is used in clinical testing. They found some patients were positive according to the research test, but negative according to the clinical test…
The recommendations include updated disease activity measures and a new set of functional status assessment measures for rheumatoid arthritis.
A recent study investigated the possible differences in nailfold videocapillaroscopy in four types of inflammatory myopathies. Researchers observed giant capillaries, disorganization and major capillary loss in dermatomyositis and overlap myositis patients, finding dermatomyositis and overlap myositis imaging was different from that of antisynthetase syndrome and immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy…