Atlas of Rheumatoid Arthritis is a high-quality educational initiative, written by leaders in the field of rheumatology, containing a collection of approximately 150 relevant images, with extended descriptive captions and a comprehensive bibliography. The Atlas of Rheumatoid Arthritis will provide clinicians with a visual guide to rheumatoid arthritis, focusing on assessment, diagnosis and treatment, including newer research into the signalling pathways involved in the pathogenesis of RA, before focusing on the treatment of RA. Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common and most serious of the inflammatory arthritic disorders, and it dominates clinical rheumatological practice. Effective, early treatment is vital as this can slow the course of the disease and reduce joint damage. RA is usually treated using disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs), most commonly methotrexate. The newest treatments target the disease-causing immune elements specifically and directly.

Arthritis and its related musculoskeletal disorders constitute the most common chronic illnesses in the United States. These conditions adversely affect the quality of life of those who are struck by them, require increased use of health care resources, and, because they are the leading cause of disability in the United States, have a significant impact on the national economy. Physicians and other health care workers in many disciplines have been involved in the care and study of patients with these diseases. As a result, our understanding of and ability to treat these diseases have improved continuously. This Atlas of Rheumatology is designed to help clinicians learn about this group of diseases and develop an understanding of their possible causes, clinical features, laboratory findings, and treatments, using an attractive pictorial format. Because more than 100 sepa rate types of arthritis have been described, unfortunately all could not be included. The illus trations shown in the Atlas have been carefully selected by recognized experts, who served as authors of the eight chapters, to provide the reader with the essential information needed to get a clear picture of these important diseases. For their successful efforts I am deeply grateful. I am also indebted to editorial workers who have maintained high standards to create a clear, attractive final product.

This edition of the Atlas of Rheumatology is designed to help clinicians learn about arthritis and other related musculoskeletal disorders, and to develop an understanding of their possible clauses, clinical features, laboratory findings, and treatments in an informative, pictorial format. There are hundreds of high quality images in step with the latest developments in medicine along with hand-drawn illustrations and in-depth explanations for each image. The text is supplied by world-renowned authors from a variety of medical disciplines.

Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is a form of arthritic joint disease associated with the chronic skin scaling and fingernail changes seen in psoriasis. Patients with PsA have a reduced quality of life. This comprehensive visual reference contains over 150 images from a wide gamut of variations of the disease, as well as charts and tables detailing the most up-to-date information on patient susceptibility, incidence, and symptoms.

This text provides clinicians hundreds of high quality color and black and white photographs of conditions encountered in the field of dermatology and rheumatology. Edited by a highly respected leader from one of the top nationally ranked hospitals, this atlas includes surgical aspects, clinical presentation, and forms of diagnosis and treatment for dermatology and rheumatology, allowing the reader to quickly find the answers to the most common clinical questions. Written for dermatologists and rheumatologists, as well as primary care physicians and internists, the Atlas of Dermatology-Rheumatology is a comprehensive visual guide to effectively evaluate, diagnose, and manage all forms of skin disease.

Primary Raynaud phenomenon, as clinical symptom of altered peripheral microcirculation, affects 5ˆ15% of individuals in the general population and almost 15% of cases will shift from the primary to the secondary phenomenon (associated with the systemic sclerosis and other connective tissue diseases) in a mean time of 29.4±10 months. Nailfold videocapillaroscopy (NVC) represents the safest, noninvasive, less expensive and reliable method to analyze microvascular abnormalities in systemic sclerosis and the findings can be scored and quantified. Since microvascular damage and dysfunction represent early markers of systemic sclerosis and are clinically mirrored by secondary Raynaud phenomenon, the diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic implications of microvessel morphological analysis by NVC enables the best clinical management. Reduced capillary density on NVC predict and correlates with a high risk of developing digital skin ulcers and the presence of pulmonary arterial hypertension, and can therefore be used as a marker of systemic sclerosis severity and progression, as well as to monitorize the therapeutical effects. Growing interest and intense recent research on capillaroscopy have resulted up to 2010 in almost 350 papers reported in PubMed in the last 10 years, accounting for almost 50% of the total number of publications on the subject from 1951. However, an atlas explaining the capillaroscopy in rheumatic diseases in a modern, updated and physiologically-based way with large discussion of clinical cases was lacking and is now available. The authors of the atlas have been selected among the best international experts of the field and are all members of the board of the international courses on capillaroscopy supported by the European Ligue Against Rheumatic Diseases (EULAR). The reader after a carefull and progressive analysis of the text will learn to understand the capillaroscopic findings that characterize the most important rheumatic diseases and will use the atlas for his daily clinical practice.

Patients with rheumatic diseases frequently exhibit a multiplicity of clinical and radiographic signs. The ability to correctly interpret these clues to diagnosis is an invaluable clinical skill, and an essential component of diagnostic decision making. This book is designed as a pictorial guide to clinical rheumatology and illustrates the principal clinical and radiographic signs of many musculoskeletal disorders. It is intended to supplement the more factual types of information found in standard textbooks and to provide the reader with a visual experience equivalent to that of several years in clinical practice. The two initial chapters on history and physical examination are incorporated to provide a construct within which the relevance of subsequent sections can be viewed. The disease-oriented chapters which form the majority of the text illustrate many of the more complex problems encountered in routine rheumatologic practice. Descriptions of several rare and unusual conditions, of particular clinical importance, have been included in the final chapter. It is the author's hope that this atlas will appeal to family practitioners, trainees in both rheumatology and general medicine, and senior medical students, as well as serve as a teaching resource for the general physician and specialty rheumatologist. Whether read chapter by chapter or used purely as a reference text it is intended to be kept on hand both in the clinic and on the ward.

Inflammatory pathology of the spine is an underestimated, but widespread condition among the population. This atlas shares essential information and case studies on key aspects of MRI for rheumatic inflammatory lesions of the osteoarticular structures of the spine, offering radiologists and clinicians a valuable guide to the management of patients with inflammatory back pain. In particular, this richly illustrated and comprehensive case-based atlas documents the MR findings observed in seronegative spondyloarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis of the cervical spine, providing guidelines on selecting the appropriate imaging protocol. The book is divided into two main parts, the first of which describes the general, clinical and radiological aspects of both spondyloarthritis and, as a new entry in the second edition, rheumatoid arthritis of the cervical spine. The second part then presents cases of spondylitis; discitis; facet joint and costovertebral osteoarthritis; sacroiliitis and rheumatoid arthritis of the atlanto-axial joint, including concise clinical and radiological information and a wealth of high-resolution images. The idea for a second edition of this book stemmed, on the one hand, from the global response to the first edition, and on the other, from a desire to expand the content to include wider illustrations and to address the clinically and socially relevant topic of the inflammatory pathology of the spine in more depth. The second edition offers a comprehensive guide to MRI of inflammatory diseases of the spine, facilitating an early diagnosis, which has become essential with the advent of new effective but expensive treatments with TNF inhibitors. Thanks to its “case-based” structure, the book offers an easy-to-use but thorough handbook for radiologists, neuroradiologists, rheumatologists, orthopedists and physiatrists, as well as students.