ACR: American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting

Gerd Burmester, MD, of Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin, discussed the results of a randomized, double-blind monotherapy study comparing the safety and efficacy of sarilumab with adalimumab in patients who cannot tolerate methotrexate.

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.

During a session at the Annual Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology, Jeffrey Curtis, MD, discussed the ways in which patients with rheumatoid arthritis who demonstrate a less-than-adequate response to a tumor necrosis factor inhibitor can be treated with another disease-modifying antirheumatic drug.

During a session at the Annual Meeting of the American College of Rheumatology, John D. Isaacs, MD, PhD, FRCP, not only reviewed regulatory perspectives as biosimilars enter the market, but conveyed the importance of crafting antibodies to our own purposes.

David Hafler, MD, chairman of the Department of Neurology at the Yale School of Medicine, spoke of exciting times in the field of genome-wide association study-specifically speaking to neurology, genetics, the environment, and the autoimmune response.

The goal of medicine is function and health. Clinicians who marry technical skills with humanities can see their patients and themselves in the larger context of family, society, history, politics, and economics.

Patients who live with rheumatoid arthritis do not die from swollen joints but face twice the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

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.

The 12-biomarker test is gaining acceptance among rheumatologists and was recently added to a clinical guideline.