Imaging News

Genicular artery embolization is safe and “highly effective” in reducing symptoms of moderate-to-severe knee osteoarthritis in patients who have been unresponsive to other conservative therapy, according to data.

EULAR has released a list of 23 recommendations — including 21 “mandatory” items — such as blinding, the development of scoring systems and defining target pathologies, for all rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease studies using ultrasound.

Researchers studying a Belgian cohort of patients with hand osteoarthritis observed evidence of radiological progression over 2 years even without clinical worsening, according to data published in Arthritis Research & Therapy.

Artificial neural networks can assess and detect radiographic sacroiliitis, helping physicians to diagnose and classify axial spondyloarthritis, according to data presented at the American College of Rheumatology 2020 Annual Meeting.

The COVID-19 pandemic, in places like Detroit, with a large working-class population, can highlight the gap between the rich and the poor. It can demonstrate how political unrest can impact the response to a critical situation. Moreover, it can show how health care workers can face both personal and professional challenges in managing an outbreak of this magnitude.

As a general rule, rheumatologists are comfortable with ambiguous diagnoses, given that so many of the conditions they manage are marked by a wide spectrum of presentations and manifestations. A prime example is axial spondyloarthritis, which is divided into two categories: radiographic axial spondyloarthritis — also called ankylosing spondylitis — and nonradiographic axial spondyloarthritis. Discussion surrounding the nonradiographic form of this disease has been known to prompt the almost preposterous fundamental question: Is it even a thing?

Ultrasound can assist clinical examinations in precisely identifying inflamed sites in ankles among patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, according to findings published in Arthritis Care & Research.

The very idea of social distancing runs contrary to congregation and celebration, two things that lie at the core of New Orleans culture. It is for this reason, perhaps, that New Orleanians were initially resistant to quarantine measures to contain COVID-19. But as the death toll climbed and Mayor LaToya Cantrell canceled St. Patrick’s Day festivities, the city slowly awakened to the idea that this was serious business.

Although a negative Doppler ultrasound can help rule out inflammatory disease in tenosynovitis, positive results are nonspecific and warrant tenosynovial fluid testing, according to data published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

A newly formed organization, the COVID-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance, has launched an international registry to collect data on patients with rheumatic diseases who may or may not have contracted the infection that is causing the global pandemic. The aim is to aid clinicians and researchers in real time as the situation evolves.