Rheumatology

Ultrasounds are a safer and equally effective diagnostic tool compared with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to diagnose and monitor pregnant women with suspected active rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to a new report published in Radiology Case Reports.

Adherence to newly initiated biologic therapy for rheumatoid arthritis is important for long-term adherence.

When patients with rheumatoid arthritis experience failure of an anti–tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) therapy, clinical guidelines support either cycling to a different anti-TNF agent or switching to a treatment with a different method of action (MOA). However, payers often require cycling of anti-TNF options before they will reimburse for treatments with a different MOA.

In a new study, published in Arthritis Research & Therapy, a research team led by Soo-Kyung Cho, MD, sought to investigate the incidence of malignancy in early rheumatoid arthritis and found that the use of biologic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs decreased the overall risk of developing malignancies, though it did not affect the risk of developing hematologic malignancies.

In a Tuesday panel discussion at The American College of Rheumatology’s 2017 Annual Meeting in San Diego, California, representatives from HHS, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the CDC outlined ongoing federal initiatives to address the parallel problems of pain and opioid addiction.

On Tuesday afternoon, the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and the National Psoriasis Foundation (NPF) presented a draft of their new, jointly developed clinical guideline for treating psoriatic arthritis (PsA), at the ACR 2017 Annual Meeting.

During a session at the 2017 American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in San Diego, California, a cardiologist joined rheumatologists to give a detailed look at the relationship between rheumatic conditions and cardiovascular disease.

Occupations related to potential noxious airborne agents are related to an increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to recent research.

At the Annual Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in Washington, DC, several experts presented their progress in harnessing technology to help teenagers and young adults manage their juvenile arthritis.

Be careful what you wish for:  SGR and FFS will be models of the past; the success of the APM and MIPS will rely on compensation, collaboration and participation; and, to date, much remains to be done in the development of quality-based payment reform under MACRA. 

Telehealth broadly is about creating care connections across boundaries, care that encourages patients’ independence, prevention and wellness; and care that can be leveraged for needed interventions. If we get telehealth right we can reduce impact of what we know is a growing health workforce shortage and concurrently create a healthier, more engaged patient base.

Two leading academic rheumatologists who took part in a live discussion with A. Mark Fendrick, MD, co-editor-in-chief of The American Journal of Managed Care, agreed that getting an accurate early diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is key to getting the patient started on disease modifying therapy. Today's goal, they said, is remission of the disease, not just managing symptoms.

A formulary restriction policy in a Medicare population was associated with lower celecoxib utilization; however, higher gastrointestinal- and arthritis-related medical costs were observed.