CHICAGO—Sherine E. Gabriel, MD, MSc, professor of medicine at Rutgers Medical School in Newark, N.J., and a past president of the ACR, presented an overview of cardiovascular disease and rheumatology on a Saturday morning to a room overflowing with rheumatologists attending the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. She noted that physicians have known for a…
CHICAGO—Delia Chiaramonte, MD, associate director of education at the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, presented the newest thinking on pain to a gathering of rheumatologists at the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. She began by explaining that pain is more than nociception. Nociception stimulates nerves to…
CHICAGO—Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, professor of medicine at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, presented on emerging concepts of viral infections and rheumatic disease at the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. “We are at a pivotal point in rheumatology in understanding the relationship between viruses and rheumatic disease,” began Dr. Calabrese. “It’s a very exciting time.” Dr. Calabrese…
CHICAGO—A clustering of cases in Lyme, Conn., in 1975 led to the discovery of Lyme disease. Allen C. Steere, MD, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, investigated that outbreak, and he shared his knowledge of Lyme disease with rheumatologists gathered at the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. He explained that Lyme arthritis…
CHICAGO—On a Saturday morning in Chicago, Chester V. Oddis, MD, director of the Myositis Center at the University of Pittsburgh, explained to a crowded room of about 500 rheumatologists attending the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April how best to use myositis autoantibodies in clinical care. He began with an overview of the different types of…
CHICAGO—Warren Piette, MD, professor of dermatology at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, updated rheumatologists on the topic of cutaneous vasculitis at the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. He began by explaining that the current vasculitis criteria developed by the ACR in 1990 and the Chapel Hill Consensus Conference (CHCC) in 1994 are inadequate to incorporate…
CHICAGO—Doruk Erkan, MD, MPH, a rheumatologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery and Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, described recent developments in the field of antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) to the rheumatologists gathered for the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. He introduced APS as a “field with limited data and lots of controversies,” although,…
CHICAGO—Caryn A. Libbey, MD, clinical associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine, described the evolving in our understanding of amyloid at the ACR’s State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium in April. Amyloidosis is a rare disease that is often underdiagnosed and undertreated. “Even though this disease has been around for 150 years, I still consider it…
Awareness can be an ambiguous term, but it makes all the difference in rheumatology. The first weeks and months following the onset of rheumatic disease symptoms are known as the window of opportunity. Prompt treatment can prevent damage to joints and other organs, improve long-term function and increase the likelihood of achieving disease remission. But…
Rheumatology is at a critical juncture in our history. To advance into the future, the ACR must thoroughly prepare for changing political landscapes, emerging technologies and workforce challenges. On May 12, the ACR Board of Directors met in Washington, D.C., to approve our ambitious new Strategic Plan for 2017–2022. This plan encompasses five strategic themes…