New patient referrals are always exciting (at least to me). It’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Sometimes, you find all of the pieces right away and are able to figure out the whole picture pretty easily. Other times, you realize that you are missing a few...
Hopefully, you are familiar with the patient Bill of Rights that was drafted by the federal government’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry in the late 1990s. It was created with the following three overarching goals:1 •...
TK was an 8-year-old female who presented to our pediatric rheumatology clinic about a year ago with a positive antinuclear antibody (ANA) test result (1:320), general fatigue, and a recent preliminary diagnosis of pediatric systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) that was...
"SLE IS LIKE A GREY WOLF LURKING AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS, WAITING PATIENTLY TO ATTACK AN INDIVIDUAL’S BLOODSTREAM WHEN IT IDENTIFIES AN OPPORTUNITY..." Systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) has been called “The Great Imposter.” A sneaky disease that frequently changes...
When I met JP, she had just turned 22 years old. She had been living with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) since the age of 13, suffering through many ups and downs.As with every other young lupus patient I see, JP had extremely aggressive disease. Since being...
I work in a university-based rheumatology practice that includes an inpatient team that sees patients on the rheumatology service or consults on patients admitted to other services within our system.Three years ago, our team was called in for a consult on SJ, a...