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Congress of Clinical Rheumatology to feature both well-known, 'off the circuit' speakers
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More than 620 registered attendees from 45 states and 11 countries are traveling to Destin, Florida, this week for the 2019 Congress of Clinical Rheumatology, scheduled for May 2 to 5, according to David McLain, MD, FACP, FACR, where they will learn about a wide range of topics from speakers they may not hear anywhere else.
“We try to cover a wide range of topics, including some of these diseases — like connective tissue diseases — that are not typically the kinds of things you hear about,” McLain, executive director for Alabama Society for the Rheumatic Diseases and symposium director for the 2019 Congress of Clinical Rheumatology (CCR), told Healio Rheumatology. “Some of the rheumatology meetings, they do a lot of rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis, but they maybe don’t do as much in lupus or osteoporosis. We are doing osteoporosis, dermatomyositis, Sjogren’s, Behçet’s, scleroderma and others.”
“Another thing that sets us apart is that we have a lot of speakers who are not on the regular circuit,” he added. “There are some speakers that are on every meeting program, and they are kind of on the circuit. We have a lot of people for whom this will be the only meeting where they speak.”
However, that does not mean attendees will not recognize any of faculty and speakers, McLain said. Well-known speakers will include Michael R. McClung, MD, of the Oregon Osteoporosis Center; Arthur Kavanaugh, MD, of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine; Michelle Petri, MD, MPH, director of the Johns Hopkins Lupus Center; Joan Von Feldt, MD, MSEd, emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and former American College of Rheumatology president, McLain said.
Notable sessions during CCR 2019 will also include Judith James, MD, PhD, of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, discussing undifferentiated connective tissue disease.
“Undifferentiated connective tissue disease is something that we see a lot in rheumatology, and nobody talks about it,” McLain said. “There is no drug for it, and so you don’t see it a lot on programs.”
In addition, Paul Emery, MD, MA, FRCP, FMedSci, of the University of Leeds, U.K., will educate attendees on preventing RA and how to approach patients in RA remission.
“Both those topics are really timely as we get better and better treatments for rheumatoid arthritis,” McLain said. “We would like to know when to start treatment, and he talks about that — which patients for whom you may start treatment really early because you have some inkling that they are developing rheumatoid arthritis.”
CCR will also feature the 13th annual North American Young Rheumatology Investigator Forum (NYRIF), which will include more than 100 rheumatology fellows. There, fellows and junior faculty will be given a platform to present their clinical or basic science research for review and critique by a panel of rheumatologists.
“This is going to be our largest meeting ever — we have been growing and growing, year after year,” McLain said. “With all of our speakers, as well as 32 hours of possible CME, it is going to be a great place where you can get recharged on all your information.” – by Jason Laday
Healio Rheumatology staff will report live on breaking news presented at the meeting and capture video interviews with experts to gain their perspectives on important presentations. Visit and follow @HealioRheum on Twitter for the latest news emerging from CCR this year.