This splendid volume is easily understandable, uses real-life situations as examples and is far more up-to-the-minute than other such books. From sexuality to surgery, it offers practical and science-based advice.--Charles M. Plotz, M.D., Editor-in-Chief, Rheuma21st.com
Your complete guide to understanding and living well with rheumatoid arthritis
If you or someone close to you suffers from rheumatoid arthritis (RA), this book is a powerful tool you don't want to be without. Two of the authors are physicians at the Hospital for Special Surgery, one of the nation's oldest and best orthopedic research hospitals. Its purpose is to arm you with the information you need to take charge of your disease management and work with your doctors to develop a treatment program that's right for your lifestyle and life goals.
In plain English, the authors demystify rheumatoid arthritis-its causes, progression, and various effects on the human body-and decode the often perplexing language that doctors use to describe RA and its diagnosis and treatment. They explain the various treatment and pain management options available to you and ways to discuss them with your doctor. The authors also include the true stories of RA patients whose tales offer encouragement and powerful insights for dealing with the difficult psychological and lifestyle issues RA sufferers face. Their expert advice and guidance covers a range of topics of vital concern to people affected by RA, including:
* Old, new, and emerging drug therapies, including gold, corticosteroids, and immunosuppressants
* Analgesics and anti-inflammatories
* Alternative treatment strategies
* Nutrition, diet, and exercise for RA
* Vitamins and supplements, including glucosamine and Evening Primrose oil
* Managing crucial lifestyle issues such as sports, travel, and sex
* Pregnancy and RA
* Alleviating depression and pain
* Surgical options, including joint replacement therapy

This new edition is a comprehensive and updated resource on antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), which is an autoimmune disorder. In APS, the body recognizes certain normal components of blood and/or cell membranes as foreign substances and produces antibodies (antiphospholipid antibodies) against them. APS is associated with recurrent clotting events (thrombosis) including premature stroke, repeated miscarriages, phlebitis, venous thrombosis, and pulmonary thromboembolism. It is also associated with low platelet or blood elements that prevent bleeding. Recently, however, even more disease states have been linked with APS, including premature heart attack, various cardiac valvular abnormalities, skin lesions, kidney disease, abnormal involuntary movement/chorea, diseases that mimic multiple sclerosis, and vascular diseases of the eye that can lead to visual loss and blindness. The International Congress on Antiphospholipid Antibodies, held every 3 years, is the venue where representatives from different disciplines gather to discuss the recent advances in APS. The conference intends to cover basic aspects of APS, such as pathogenesis, origins, genetics, intracellular and molecular events, the role of infections, as well as traditional and non-traditional clinical manifestations associated with antiphospholipid antibodies. The 15th Congress took place in September 2016. A novel aspect of the Congress was that multiple teams, chaired by Scientific Planning Committee members, used evidence-based literature reviews and expert discussions to answer specific pre-defined APS-related questions. These teams included points of view from experts in rheumatology, hematology, cardiovascular medicine, obstetrics, neurology, and immunology. The Scientific Planning Committee members also chaired the congress sessions and supervised completion of the reports that are the bases of the chapters of this book. In addition, there are two chapters included specifically written for APS patients. Much like the previous volume, dedicated to the 13th International Congress on Antiphospholipid Antibodies (April 2010), this up-to-date and comprehensive work gathers invaluable insights from a multidisciplinary team of world-renowned experts and represents the authoritative resource on causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of APS.

This new edition is a comprehensive and updated resource on antiphospholipid syndrome (APS), which is an autoimmune disorder. In APS, the body recognizes certain normal components of blood and/or cell membranes as foreign substances and produces antibodies (antiphospholipid antibodies) against them. APS is associated with recurrent clotting events (thrombosis) including premature stroke, repeated miscarriages, phlebitis, venous thrombosis, and pulmonary thromboembolism. It is also associated with low platelet or blood elements that prevent bleeding. Recently, however, even more disease states have been linked with APS, including premature heart attack, various cardiac valvular abnormalities, skin lesions, kidney disease, abnormal involuntary movement/chorea, diseases that mimic multiple sclerosis, and vascular diseases of the eye that can lead to visual loss and blindness. The International Congress on Antiphospholipid Antibodies, held every 3 years, is the venue where representatives from different disciplines gather to discuss the recent advances in APS. The conference intends to cover basic aspects of APS, such as pathogenesis, origins, genetics, intracellular and molecular events, the role of infections, as well as traditional and non-traditional clinical manifestations associated with antiphospholipid antibodies. The 15th Congress took place in September 2016. A novel aspect of the Congress was that multiple teams, chaired by Scientific Planning Committee members, used evidence-based literature reviews and expert discussions to answer specific pre-defined APS-related questions. These teams included points of view from experts in rheumatology, hematology, cardiovascular medicine, obstetrics, neurology, and immunology. The Scientific Planning Committee members also chaired the congress sessions and supervised completion of the reports that are the bases of the chapters of this book. In addition, there are two chapters included specifically written for APS patients. Much like the previous volume, dedicated to the 13th International Congress on Antiphospholipid Antibodies (April 2010), this up-to-date and comprehensive work gathers invaluable insights from a multidisciplinary team of world-renowned experts and represents the authoritative resource on causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of APS.

Doctors, patients, investigators, administrators, and policymakers who assign diagnoses assume three elements: the name describes an entity with conceptual or evidentiary boundaries, the person setting the name has a high degree of certainty, and the name has a consensus definition. This book challenges this practice and offers an alternative to assigning diagnoses: quantitating diagnostic uncertainty in personal and public medical plans. This book offers the stakeholders' views participating in a workshop, sponsored by the Barbara Volcker Center/Hospital for Special Surgery, taking place in April 2020, about uncertain diagnoses. Chapters examine the circumstances in which diagnosis names are "unassignable", either because patients do not fit within diagnostic "boxes" or because health abnormalities evolve and change over time. In addition, the book deconstructs the processes of diagnosis and explores how different stakeholders used diagnosis names for various purposes. In examining pertinent questions, the book offers a roadmap to achieving consensus definitions or including measures of uncertainty in personal care, research, and policy. Diagnoses Without Names: Challenges for Medical Care, Research, and Policy is an essential resource for physicians and related professionals, residents, fellows, and graduate students in internal medicine, rheumatology, and clinical immunology as well as investigators, administrators, policymakers.

15 years ago the noted physician, Dr. Michael Lockshin, Professor of Medicine and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medical School and Director of the Barbara Volker Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery wrote Guarded Prognosis, a book about the health care system from the point of view of a physician with broad experience in treating chronic disease. Michael Lockshin is one of America's preeminent experts in the long-term care of chronically ill patients. He is a pioneer in solving health-care issues that arise with the illnesses on which he has done his most renowned research-systemic lupus erythematosus, Antiphospholipid syndrome, and other autoimmune diseases which especially afflict women. Guarded Prognosis has been re-issued as an eBook. 15 years after its first publication, the reader will be struck by how far the we have come-in terms of electronic records and the new hospitalist system-but also by how little has changed for patients with chronic illness navigating the U.S. healthcare system. Guarded Prognosis is newly relevant in the light of the acrimonious debate over "Obamacare" whose passage Dr. Lockshin heartily endorses as a route to the universal health coverage so desperately needed by those with chronic illness. These affecting stories of chronically ill patients and the policy lessons learned from their experience make clear how important it is to change our inefficient, costly, and often inhumane healthcare system. Otherwise, each of us could be at risk not only from disease, but from fragmented and costly healthcare.