Clark Kent, Hannah Montana, Dexter Morgan, David Bowie and your friendly neighborhood rheumatologist: What do all of these people have in common? Chances are, they live secret lives we rarely get to peer into. Unlike Superman, Miley Stewart, Dexter Morgan and Ziggy Stardust, rheumatologists are very much real, flesh-and-blood characters. Rheumatologists also have secret lives…
In this episode, Dr. Kumar talks about the myths, rituals and stories that are essential to the patient’s narrative, diagnosis and care.
“Doctor, I hate to tell you this but that shelf is definitely not made of wood,” my patient gently chided me as I knocked on a plastic piece of shelving. “I know … but you get the point,” I replied with a small laugh. It’s become a habit of mine over the past few years…
Lupus has always had a reputation for being a wild, unrestrained and enigmatic entity. In fact, the very name lupus comes from the Latin word for wolf, a gift from our Roman predecessors who saw a resemblance between lupus rashes and a wolf’s bite. Given the limitations of immunology back then, it is an incredibly…
They looked exactly alike—tall, slightly scruffy gentlemen with denim overalls lightly stained with dirt and oil, with dusty trucker hats to match. The only difference was that one wore a red checkered shirt and the other wore a green one. Yet these similarities were deceptive. The one closest to me was the patient, the one…
In this episode, Dr. Kumar reflects on the impact of uncertainty on rheumatology and the important role of the rheumatologist in providing clarity for patients. He also highlights important articles in the May issue for readers to note.
I often think about medical literature as a sprawling metropolis. There are towering skyscrapers of randomized controlled trials, lofty schools of systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and verdant parks of qualitative studies. Much less assuming are the case reports, which are sort of like homesteads for the majority of people who publish and contribute to the…
In this episode, Dr. Kumar talks about why case reports are important in rheumatology and introduces his Rheuminations column in the April issue, in which he talks about the types of cases that make a good case report and elements that go into a good report.
In this episode of his monthly video series for The Rheumatologist, physician editor Dr. Bharat Kumar talks about isolation and its impact on our patients with rheumatic disease, and the rheumatologist’s role in combating it.
My children were playing in the car the other day and pulled open the glove box. Inside, they found a brown paper bag with my last name “KUMAR” in black Sharpie and a red sticker that read, “Do not lose. No replacements available.” It wasn’t long before the kids tore that bag apart to find…