CHICAGO—Held during the 2018 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting, the ACR Review Course covered a wide range of topics for rheumatologists—from advances in pain and rheumatic disease management to the intersection of rheumatology and neurology. Session speakers shared insights, as well as state-of-the-art approaches to diagnosis, management and treatment. Inflammatory Myopathies Julie J. Paik, MD, MHS, assistant…
Rheumatologists can build resilience through recovery and reframing, transforming stress so that it enhances performance…
CHICAGO—To drive home the importance of how social determinants can make or break a person’s health, Jillian Rose, LCSW, MPH, the director of community, engagement, diversity and research at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, told a story about a gardener planting flowers at the 2018 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting. In the story,…
Winston Churchill once said, “There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” So—with this, our first presidential column of 2019—we are bringing you news of a change or two. First, ARHP, our health professionals’ membership division, has changed its name to the Association of Rheumatology Professionals, or ARP. This new…
One of my fellows could take better care of his patients if it weren’t for the attendings getting in his way. Or so he tells me. I can hear the howls of protest already. This statement isn’t fair—it is too broad, it doesn’t fairly depict the nuances of the situation or his point of view. First,…
With more than 152,000 taken steps in four days, top honors in the first-ever ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting Walking Challenge go to Mark Phelan, MD…
More than 10 years ago, I wrote a commentary in The Rheumatologist, called “Perils of Pain Meds,” about the over-prescribing of opioid analgesics for common causes of chronic noncancer pain, which was a major contributor to the opioid epidemic.1 Since that time, although there has been a greater than 20% decrease in opioid prescribing, the…
Recent research demonstrated that fibromyalgia patients have lower cerebral blood flow velocity variability than healthy controls, which may reflect impaired coordination of cerebral regulatory systems. This analysis may be a promising tool for characterizing fibromyalgia pathology and understanding health-related quality of life…
The ACR will add a new professional journal, ACR Open Rheumatology, in January 2019. An open access journal, it will feature the same high-quality, rigorously peer-reviewed articles on original investigations in rheumatology research, as well as commentaries and reviews, as the ACR’s other journals, Arthritis & Rheumatology (A&R) and Arthritis Care & Research (AC&R). Co-Editors-in-Chief…
Presentation A 26-year-old man with a history of acne vulgaris and hidradenitis suppurativa presented to our rheumatology clinic with persistent back pain and stiffness of three years’ duration. He described bilateral low back pain that was worse when he arose in the morning and at night when he was trying to sleep. In a similar…