Wisconsin Rheumatology Association 2025 Annual Meeting

Wisconsin Rheumatology Association 2025 Annual Meeting is organized by Wisconsin Rheumatology Association (WRA) and will be held from Mar 21 - 22, 2025 at The American Club Resort, Kohler, Wisconsin, United States of America.

Description:
Educational Needs:

Clinicians must become familiar with the spectrum of orthobiologic treatments and their biological foundations. Rheumatologists should be trained to critically evaluate and integrate the newest clinical trials, systematic reviews, and consensus statements into practice. There is a need to understand cost-effectiveness, out-of-pocket costs, and patient counseling strategies for orthobiologic therapies. Physicians require clear guidance on current FDA regulations, professional society recommendations, and ethical standards to ensure compliant practice.

Rheumatologists need to identify potential cases of infectious rather than autoimmune ocular inflammatory disease to ensure treatment is appropriately directed towards antimicrobial rather than immunosuppressive therapies.

Incidence of gout continues to grow and is a substantial burden for our patients as well as the healthcare system. Despite the availability of effective treatments, patients receive suboptimal therapy that is associated with more frequent gout flares in the setting of chronic medical conditions. Practice patterns across all providers including rheumatologists, have shown variances in the management of gout that requires lifelong therapy with long-term monitoring in the outpatient setting. The goal of this session will be to offer practitioners insight on the latest advances in this disease.

Rheumatologists need to be aware of the burden of poor outcomes in lupus. Additionally, they need to be knowledgeable about the potential gaps in early detection of poor outcomes and preventing these. Lastly, they need to know how to intervene and reduce outcome disparities.

The diagnosis and management of SRD or CTD-associated lung disease requires a multidisciplinary approach and individualized care plans. A lack of controlled interventional studies in the setting of more prolonged or indolent disease courses for the majority of SRD or CTD-associated lung diseases offers unique challenges for current management and future therapeutic approaches.

Therapy for scleroderma has mainly focused on addressing individual disease manifestations, due to an absence of effective approaches to the underlying disease itself. Skin, vascular, renal and lung issues have been targets of organ-specific treatment studies. Recent research on pathogenesis of scleroderma lung disease has identified a potential pathway for intervention to alleviate this serious complication.

Educational Objectives:

At the conclusion of the Wisconsin Rheumatology Association 2025 Annual Meeting, attendees will be able to:

1. Recognize various orthobiologic treatments (e.g., PRP, BMAC, adipose-derived therapies), their preparation methods, and their proposed mechanisms of action.
2. Analyze current literature (from the last three years) on orthobiologics, including systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and consensus statements, to determine the efficacy and safety profiles of different interventions.
3. Discuss the financial implications, insurance coverage challenges, and out-of-pocket costs of orthobiologic therapies and develop strategies for transparent patient communication.
4. Apply up-to-date FDA guidelines and professional society recommendations to ensure compliant, ethical integration of orthobiologic treatments into clinical practice.
5. Implement evidence-informed decision-making to select appropriate orthobiologic treatments, balancing patient expectations, clinical outcomes, and regulatory considerations.
6. Recognize the presentation of several infectious causes of ocular inflammation as well as possible red flags for an infectious rather than autoimmune etiology.
7. Implement appropriate baseline screening for infectious causes of ocular inflammation.
8. Review initial management and options for additional ocular diagnostic testing if an infectious etiology is under consideration.
9. Discuss Gout updates in epidemiology, what’s new in diagnostics, shift in treatment paradigm, and nuances of management: updates from 2020 Gout Guidelines, ACR 2024 & ASN.
10. Outline poor outcomes in LN and SLE.
11. Discuss potential underlying causes driving poor outcomes.
12. Define existing gaps & advances in early risk management of poor outcomes.
13. Review strategies to address barriers preventing optimal med use & mitigate upstream social barriers.
14. Review the epidemiology, presentation, and typical disease course of systemic rheumatic or connective-tissue disease-associated lung disease.
15. Identify practical diagnostic and management strategies for SRD or CTD-associated lung disease.
16. Discuss current evidence and recent advances in the treatment of SRD or CTD-associated lung disease.
17. Recognize the limitations of the current state of treatment options for scleroderma.
18. Discuss the science of targeting particular pathways to address organ-specific scleroderma features.
19. Identify the risks and benefits of new treatment options for scleroderma and its manifestations.