In 2008, the American College of Rheumatology Workforce Study Advisory Group published a comprehensive rheumatology workforce analysis.1 It concluded: Based on assessment of supply and demand under current scenarios, the demand for rheumatologists is expected to exceed supply in the coming decades. Strategies for the profession to adapt to this changing health care landscape include…
When working with a newly diagnosed patient to determine a treatment plan, ensure the patient has a good understanding of the diagnosis, the options available and what the options entail. “It is important to help patients understand that there are choices, and that their decisions should be based on what matters to them,” says Susan…
SAN FRANCISCO—Inflammation can be either acute or chronic, and it’s the inflammatory responses that don’t shut down normally, or resolve, that cause tissue damage in rheumatic disease. “Resolution bridges the gap between acute inflammation and adaptive immunity,” said Derek W. Gilroy, PhD, head of the Centre for Clinical Pharmacology and Professor of Immunology at University…
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…
According to former ACR President Michael Weinblatt, MD, the future of drug therapies for patients with RA rests in the careful and intelligent prescription of current medications and treatment combinations, as well as better patient access through lower costs…
“Treat to target regardless of disease activity level” tops the list of recommendations for both early and established RA in the 2015 Guideline for the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis. The guideline addresses six major topics, including DMARDs, glucocorticoids and biologics, and includes 74 recommendations. These recommendations are not prescriptive, and the treatment decisions should be made by physicians and patients together…
The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) announced the availability of its 2015 Guideline for the Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) during the 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in San Francisco. An early draft of the recommendations was presented at last year’s meeting in Boston, and the final recommendations are now available on the ACR website. The…
By considering the long-term damage from early, aggressive rheumatoid arthritis, researchers in the UK were able to develop a model demonstrating the long-term cost effectiveness of more aggressive combination therapies v. short-term treatments…
In a Phase 2 study, researchers found that rontalizumab was a more effective treatment in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus who had an interferon signature metric score lower than 1.
After completing a 10-year clinical trial examining treatment strategies for rheumatoid arthritis, Dutch researchers used a questionnaire to determine the study conditions and individual motivators that kept 60% of patients participating long term…