VIDEO: Increased focus on vasculitis, pregnancy at ACR 2023

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The most recent conference I went to was the American College of Rheumatology Conference in 2023 in San Diego, and there was lots of interest in vasculitis in this conference.

I was particularly honored to be featured as a plenary speaker to talk about vasculitis in pregnancy, and that was actually the big highlight of the conference for me was how much interest there has grown in terms of reproductive rheumatology.

There was an excellent reproductive rheumatology session that not only covered patients with vasculitis, but also covered patients with lupus and other rheumatic diseases. As we have kind of grown and changed in this field of rheumatology and learned more and more about these diseases and treatment options, we have been able to offer patients treatments that don't decrease their fertility and allow them the opportunities to pursue pregnancy during the management of their disease. And I think that we're at this point now where we're better identifying risks associated with pregnancy and vasculitis, pregnancy and lupus, pregnancy and other rheumatic diseases.

And I hope that the more we know about the risks associated with it and the things that can mitigate those risks — for example, certain medications, different treatments, different types of monitoring that we do for pregnant patients — that we can start to decrease some of those adverse outcomes over time. I think we're still in the kind of knowledge phase of the pregnancy and vasculitis phase and learning about what the true risks are and how we can modify them going forward.