Diagnosing rheumatoid arthritis (RA) early in the disease process is ideal, because treatments are more likely to be effective and less damage will occur. Guidelines from the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) state that using newer biologic medications, in addition to more aggressive dosing of traditional medications, is…
Ethiopia has a rich, variable and distinguished history and landscape. Located in the Horn of Africa, it shares borders with Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Sudan and South Sudan. Ethiopia has claim to the oldest humanoid fossils, named “Lucy,” which were discovered in 1974 and are estimated to be 3.2 million years of age.1 The country’s…
(Reuters)—Three large U.S. venture capital firms are betting that hospitals will buy into a new service designed to help healthcare providers treat their patients more like upscale hotels treat their customers. The new company, called Docent Health, is creating software and mobile applications that will help organize and monitor every aspect of an individual’s hospital…
In Europe, an etanercept biosimilar is getting closer to being approved to treat RA and more, and in the U.S., an application for an adalimumab biosimilar has been submitted for FDA approval. Also, an analysis of methotrexate use in the U.S. shows that therapy may actually be underused for RA…
(Reuters Health)—Whether surgical trainees should be able to work long shifts is a matter of fierce debate, and the methods of a controversial study aimed at answering that question were outlined in a top surgical journal. The results won’t be available until February. In the meantime, critics of the study say it exposed residents and…
Low back pain (LBP) is one of the most common reasons for physician appointments. However, treatment results remain suboptimal, resulting in high rates of chronic pain, narcotic usage, surgery, depression and disability—all at great cost to individuals and the nation. One reason for this is the current practice of grouping all low back pain patients…
In medicine, as in all other areas of human endeavor, we cannot really understand where we are if we don’t understand how we arrived here. American rheumatology traces its origins nine decades back to Europe, when the International Committee on Rheumatism was founded by Jan van Breeman in 1925 at a European meeting of medical…
Nobody likes waiting to see their physician. In fact, a whopping 97% of patients are frustrated by wait times at the doctor’s office, a study has reported.1 That’s a lot of unhappy patients. Fortunately, a practice can do many things to help keep patient appointments on time—beginning with proper scheduling techniques and monitoring patients’ progress…
A recent trend to incorporate patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in clinical research, and ultimately clinical practice, is a response to the need to better measure and treat what patients truly care about, and adapt to the changing healthcare environment, which increasingly includes patient satisfaction as a key metric for overall quality of care, a metric tied…
James K. Smith, MD, believes in thinking several moves ahead. Consider your opponent. Gauge your strategy. Be aggressive when you need to be. Those are key aspects of his philosophy in rheumatology—and chess. Initiation Dr. Smith’s love of chess started after he had started his family. “I first got involved in the game through my…