Around the Rheum

In this special Virtual Care episode of Around the Rheum, host Daniel Ennis is joined by Brent Ohata and Tommy Gerschman, two of the leading advocates for telehealth in Rheumatology. They discuss the pre-COVID-19 use of virtual care, how rheumatologists made the quick pivot to virtual care when the pandemic hit, why video is better than phone, why virtual care is a good fit for patients and doctors in many instances, and what its limitations are and why it isn’t going away anytime soon!

Bios:

Dr. Brent Ohata is an adult rheumatologist and clinical assistant professor in the UBC Division of Rheumatology. He is the co-chair of the CRA's Telehealth Working Group. He has a clinical focus on Indigenous health and health equity.

Dr. Tommy Gerschman is a community-based pediatric rheumatologist and sports medicine specialist. Dr. Gerschman has assisted with the BC Ministry of Health's Digital Health Strategy and associated policies. He is currently the co-chair of a Community-Based Specialists' working group.

Dr. Daniel Ennis is a rheumatologist and vasculitis specialist at the University of British Columbia.

Special Thanks:

Around the Rheum is produced by the Canadian Rheumatology Association's Communications Committee.

Thank you to the podcast team, Dr. Dax G. Rumsey (CRA Communications Committee Chair), Dr. Daniel Ennis (Rheumatologist and Host), David McGuffin (Producer, Explore Podcast Productions), and Kevin Baijnauth (Marketing and Communications, CRA) for leading production. Our theme music was composed by Aaron Fontwell.

For more on the work of the Canadian Rheumatology Association, including Best Practices for Virtual Care in Rheumatology

visit rheum.ca.

In this fascinating second part of our ATR conversation about osteoarthritis (OA), Dan and Janet engage with Western University's Dr. Tom Appleton on both the traditional and more groundbreaking ways to treat OA. These include pharmacological management options like steroid, hyaluronic acid, PRP, dextrose, and stem cell injections and disease-modifying osteoarthritis drugs (DMOADs) and non-pharmacological treatments, including physical therapy, exercise, and surgical options.

Bios:

-Dr. Tom Appleton is a rheumatologist at St. Joseph’s Health Care in London Ontario, and a Clinician-Scientist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Western University, where his research focus is Osteoarthritis.

-Dr. Janet Pope is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology at the University of Western Ontario, Schulich School of Medicine, London, Ontario. She is also the Division Head in Rheumatology at St. Joseph's Health Centre in London.

-Dr. Daniel Ennis is a Rheumatologist and Vasculitis Specialist at the University of British Columbia.

Special Thanks:Around the Rheum is produced by the Canadian Rheumatology Association's Communications Committee.

A special thank you to the podcast team, Dr. Dax G. Rumsey (CRA Communications Committee Chair), Dr. Daniel Ennis (Host), David McGuffin (Producer, Explore Podcast Productions), Kevin Baijnauth and Leslie Ishimwe (Marketing and Communications Director, CRA) for leading production.

Our theme music was composed by Aaron Fontwell.

For more on the work of the Canadian Rheumatology Association, visit rheum.ca.

Dr. Hugues Allard-Chamard from the University of Sherbrooke joins Dan to take a fascinating deep dive into the world of IgG4-related disease. Together they tackle the basics, like what IgG4-related disease is, the clinical spectrum of the disease, the phenotypes that we should look for clinically, an approach to diagnosis, the best tissue to biopsy, and what to look for on pathology. They discuss common mimics of the disease, how to treat it, a look at the recently published open label study on use of Abatacept (of which Hugues was an author), how and when to use Prednisone, and what's in the pipeline for IgG4-related disease.

Dr. Hugues Allard-Chamard is a Rheumatologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Sherbrooke where his research focuses on immunology and IgG4-related disease.

Dr. Daniel Ennis is a Rheumatologist and Vasculitis Specialist at the University of British Columbia.

Co-host Dr Janet Pope is off for this episode and back again with us next time.

Around The Rheum (ATR) is produced by the CRA Communications Committee. A special thank you to the podcast team, Dr. Dax G. Rumsey (CRA Communications Committee Chair), Dr. Daniel Ennis (Host), and David McGuffin (Producer, Explore Podcast Productions) for leading production.

Our theme music is by Aaron Fontwell.

You can claim podcasts as a scanning activity under the Section 2 MOC Program for 0.5 credits per podcast.

For more on the work of the Canadian Rheumatology Association (CRA), please visit www.rheum.ca.

In this episode, we continue our series of conversations on an important topic, Indigenous Health in Canada. Today, we will focus on the care of patients with rheumatic disease who live in remote communities. We will be visiting with Cynthia Munger, Community Health Representative at the Stellat'en First Nation in northern British Columbia, for a discussion on what remote communities are looking for in their relationship with visiting doctors, how to win the trust of First Nation communities to best serve patients there, and what the experience is like for visiting doctors who commit to this kind of work.

For this conversation, our host Daniel Ennis is joined by his friend and colleague Dr. Brent Ohata, a rheumatologist at UBC. Brent is passionate about Indigenous Health and health equity and has been working as a visiting rheumatologist in Stellat'en First Nation for the past ~8 years. In 2017, Brent won the Innovation Award in the UBC Division of Rheumatology for championing telehealth as a means of improving access to rheumatologic care in rural BC.

Dr. Daniel Ennis is a Rheumatologist and Vasculitis Specialist at the University of British Columbia.

Around The Rheum (ATR) is produced by the CRA Communications Committee. A special thank you to the podcast team, Dr. Dax G. Rumsey (CRA Communications Committee Chair), Dr. Daniel Ennis (Host), and David McGuffin (Producer, Explore Podcast Productions) for leading production.

Our theme music is by Aaron Fontwell.

You can claim podcasts as a scanning activity under the Section 2 MOC Program for 0.5 credits per podcast.

For more on the work of the Canadian Rheumatology Association (CRA), please visit www.rheum.ca.

We're thrilled to be joined by Dr. Dissanayake for this episode on Autoinflammatory Disorders. And we're also happy to have Janet Pope back in the host chair again with Daniel Ennis.

Together, Dilan, Daniel, and Janet have a fascinating conversation, taking on basic questions like what defines an autoinflammatory disease and how is it distinct from an Autoimmune disease? What is the interplay between autoinflammatory and autoimmune disease? How can we group or arrange the different autoinflammatory diseases to make them a more approachable topic? How to take a proper autoinflammatory disease history? How to confirm a suspected autoinflammatory disease and rule out common mimics? Finally, treatment principles and possible long-term consequences.

Dr. Dilan Dissanayake is a staff rheumatologist at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and a Transition Clinician-Scientist at SickKids Research Institute. Dr. Dissanayake’s current research interests include using high-dimensional methods to better characterize the immune cells that cause rheumatologic diseases and investigations into the functional consequences of genetic changes that lead to inflammatory diseases.

Around The Rheum (ATR) is produced by the CRA Communications Committee.

A special thank you to the podcast team, Dr. Dax G. Rumsey (CRA Communications Committee Chair), Dr. Daniel Ennis (Host), and David McGuffin (Producer, Explore Podcast Productions) for leading production.

Our theme music is by Aaron Fontwell.

You can claim podcasts as a scanning activity under the Section 2 MOC Program for 0.5 credits per podcast.

For more on the work of the Canadian Rheumatology Association (CRA), please visit www.rheum.ca