Health Care Delivery

Recognizing chronic kidney disease (CKD) can lead to earlier implementation of interventions among patients, ultimately reducing the risk of end stage renal disease, said Shweta Bansal, MD, FASN, associate professor of medicine in the nephrology division at the University of Texas Health Center at San Antonio.

Understanding patients’ social determinants of health (SDOH), including their past experiences with discrimination and medical mistrust, can help improve patient-reported outcomes (PROs), according to new research.

The use of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) equations in assessing chronic kidney disease (CKD) for Black patients may lead to underdiagnosis and undertreatment, according to a nephrologist speaking at Kidney Week.

Early treatment of infants with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) can drastically improve motor function for patients, explained Jill Jarecki, PhD, chief scientific officer at Cure SMA.

The decision to go on dialysis is often automatic, but using a shared decision-making process reduces the chance that a patient will regret it later.

In the first wave of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, patients with axial spondyloarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and psoriatic arthritis didn’t have an increase in disease activity despite an interruption in in-person interactions.

People who experience acute kidney injuries (AKIs) in the hospital have higher rates of cardiac disease and death compared with those who have been discharged, said Benjamin Griffin, MD, a nephrologist and assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa.

Recent research explored opportunities to improve care for those with acute migraine.

Despite the benefits of switching to a different mode of action in the second line, almost half of patients with rheumatoid arthritis were cycled to a second tumor necrosis factor inhibitor.

Heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) is when the heart’s left ventricle can only pump out 40% or less of the blood it contains, resulting in less oxygen-rich blood being disseminated to the body than it actually needs.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy does not always lead to a durable response, and we are trying to figure out why, noted Michael R. Green, PhD, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

2020 is the 25th anniversary of The American Journal of Managed Care® and the October’s issue of the journal features an interview with Dr Kavita Patel, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution and a primary care physician.

Increased time spent in front of computer screens, less time spent sleeping, and less access to gyms have led my patients to have a lot more migraines, said Peter McAllister, MD, a neurologist, board certified headache specialist, and medical director of the New England Institute for Neurology and Headache.

New data show that despite major improvements in survival rates in patients with multiple myeloma (MM), older patients with the malignancy have benefited less than younger patients.

Recent guidelines have renewed the focus on treating severe asthma. During 2 panels at CHEST 2020, experts discussed key updates, limitations of the guidelines, and more.

Shared decision-making is very important when it comes to choosing biologics for patients, emphasized Nicola Hanania, MD, MS, pulmonary critical care physician and director, Airways Clinical Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas.

Challenges remain, in light of new guidelines, when making treatment decisions for patients with severe asthma, noted Megan Althoff, MD, PhD, second year fellow, University of Colorado, Division of Pulmonary Sciences and Critical Care Medicine.

Abstracts presented at CHEST 2020 looked at improving diagnosis of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) with machine learning and the development of intensive care unit delirium in hospitalized patients with ARDS.

Maryland’s coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) task force on vulnerable populations leveraged data on social determinants of health to rapidly pinpoint populations most at risk of severe COVID-19 complications.

Clinician handoff is critical and can help reduce medical errors in the intensive care unit (ICU), according to a series of presentations on planning and communicating around ICU transitions.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is unlike any pandemic the world has experienced in the last 100 years, said Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during his keynote.

Current treatment options spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) are available for all types of the disease regardless of motor strength, explained Jill Jarecki, PhD, chief scientific officer at Cure SMA, and Mary Schroth, MD, FAAP, FCCP, chief medical officer at Cure SMA.

The authors, from RxCrossroads by McKesson, discuss the impact of copay accumulator and maximizer programs.

A recent analysis illustrated how a combination of different genomic approaches discovered actionable alterations in 44% of patients with metastatic breast cancer.

A new national study is highlighting disparities in morbidity and barriers to care that face patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) living in in rural areas.

It is the first PD-1 inhibitor to be approved to be used as a monotherapy for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL).

Nearly 10,000 deaths from non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were likely delayed between 2014 to 2016, the researchers calculated.

New data estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study published by The Lancet illustrate how rising rates of chronic disease and public health failures compounded over decades to worsen the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Patients with severe asthma are good candidates for biologics, but choosing which biologic requires a shared decision-making conversation, said J. Allen Meadows, MD, president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology.

Addressing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) means addressing racism, according to 2 experts in the latest episode of Managed Care Cast.