Rheumatology News

It’s time for my once-a-decade (more or less) list of resolutions. As long as you are pledging to turn over a new leaf at home, why not do it at the office as well?

I can’t presume to know what issues need addressing in your practice, but I do know the ones I get asked about most often, so I can offer some suggestions that might provide inspiration:

1. Keep your website up to date. Check it now, then make a note to check it regularly. Most people find their physicians online these days, and you don’t want them finding a year-old presentation with outdated photos, personnel, services, and rates. Keep your site current, or hire someone to do it for you.

2. Be an authoritative presence on social media. Like it or not, you should be on Facebook, Twitter (at least for now), Instagram, TikTok – wherever your patients congregate. Medical topics are popular search categories, and they are searching for expert advice. You are the expert. There is a ton of medical misinformation online, and it needs to be countered with accurate, factual data from bona fide experts.

8. Back up your data. Now is an excellent time to verify that the information on your office and personal computers is being backed up – locally and online – on a regular schedule. Don’t wait until something crashes.

9. Keep a closer eye on your office finances. Most physicians delegate the bookkeeping, and that’s fine. But ignoring the financial side completely creates an atmosphere that facilitates embezzlement. Set aside a couple of hours each month to review the books personally. And make sure your employees know you’re doing it.

10. Make sure your long-range financial planning is on track. I’ve said this before, but it can’t be repeated too often. Economic conditions change all the time. Once a year, you should sit down with your accountant and lawyer and make sure your investments are well-diversified and all other aspects of your finances – budgets, credit ratings, insurance coverage, tax situations, college savings, estate plans, retirement accounts – are in the best shape possible.

11. Pay down your debt. Another oldie but goodie. Debt can destroy the best laid retirement plans. If you carry significant debt, set up a plan to pay it off as soon as you can.

12. Take more vacations. Remember Eastern’s First Law: Your last words will NOT be, “I wish I had spent more time in the office.” If you’ve been working too much, this is the year to start spending more time enjoying your life, your friends and family, and the world. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Dr. Eastern practices dermatology and dermatologic surgery in Belleville, N.J. He is the author of numerous articles and textbook chapters, and is a longtime monthly columnist for Dermatology News. Write to him at [email protected].

It’s time for my once-a-decade (more or less) list of resolutions. As long as you are pledging to turn over a new leaf at home, why not do it at the office as well?

I can’t presume to know what issues need addressing in your practice, but I do know the ones I get asked about most often, so I can offer some suggestions that might provide inspiration:

1. Keep your website up to date. Check it now, then make a note to check it regularly. Most people find their physicians online these days, and you don’t want them finding a year-old presentation with outdated photos, personnel, services, and rates. Keep your site current, or hire someone to do it for you.

2. Be an authoritative presence on social media. Like it or not, you should be on Facebook, Twitter (at least for now), Instagram, TikTok – wherever your patients congregate. Medical topics are popular search categories, and they are searching for expert advice. You are the expert. There is a ton of medical misinformation online, and it needs to be countered with accurate, factual data from bona fide experts.

8. Back up your data. Now is an excellent time to verify that the information on your office and personal computers is being backed up – locally and online – on a regular schedule. Don’t wait until something crashes.

9. Keep a closer eye on your office finances. Most physicians delegate the bookkeeping, and that’s fine. But ignoring the financial side completely creates an atmosphere that facilitates embezzlement. Set aside a couple of hours each month to review the books personally. And make sure your employees know you’re doing it.

10. Make sure your long-range financial planning is on track. I’ve said this before, but it can’t be repeated too often. Economic conditions change all the time. Once a year, you should sit down with your accountant and lawyer and make sure your investments are well-diversified and all other aspects of your finances – budgets, credit ratings, insurance coverage, tax situations, college savings, estate plans, retirement accounts – are in the best shape possible.

11. Pay down your debt. Another oldie but goodie. Debt can destroy the best laid retirement plans. If you carry significant debt, set up a plan to pay it off as soon as you can.

12. Take more vacations. Remember Eastern’s First Law: Your last words will NOT be, “I wish I had spent more time in the office.” If you’ve been working too much, this is the year to start spending more time enjoying your life, your friends and family, and the world. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Dr. Eastern practices dermatology and dermatologic surgery in Belleville, N.J. He is the author of numerous articles and textbook chapters, and is a longtime monthly columnist for Dermatology News. Write to him at [email protected].

It’s time for my once-a-decade (more or less) list of resolutions. As long as you are pledging to turn over a new leaf at home, why not do it at the office as well?

I can’t presume to know what issues need addressing in your practice, but I do know the ones I get asked about most often, so I can offer some suggestions that might provide inspiration:

1. Keep your website up to date. Check it now, then make a note to check it regularly. Most people find their physicians online these days, and you don’t want them finding a year-old presentation with outdated photos, personnel, services, and rates. Keep your site current, or hire someone to do it for you.

2. Be an authoritative presence on social media. Like it or not, you should be on Facebook, Twitter (at least for now), Instagram, TikTok – wherever your patients congregate. Medical topics are popular search categories, and they are searching for expert advice. You are the expert. There is a ton of medical misinformation online, and it needs to be countered with accurate, factual data from bona fide experts.

8. Back up your data. Now is an excellent time to verify that the information on your office and personal computers is being backed up – locally and online – on a regular schedule. Don’t wait until something crashes.

9. Keep a closer eye on your office finances. Most physicians delegate the bookkeeping, and that’s fine. But ignoring the financial side completely creates an atmosphere that facilitates embezzlement. Set aside a couple of hours each month to review the books personally. And make sure your employees know you’re doing it.

10. Make sure your long-range financial planning is on track. I’ve said this before, but it can’t be repeated too often. Economic conditions change all the time. Once a year, you should sit down with your accountant and lawyer and make sure your investments are well-diversified and all other aspects of your finances – budgets, credit ratings, insurance coverage, tax situations, college savings, estate plans, retirement accounts – are in the best shape possible.

11. Pay down your debt. Another oldie but goodie. Debt can destroy the best laid retirement plans. If you carry significant debt, set up a plan to pay it off as soon as you can.

12. Take more vacations. Remember Eastern’s First Law: Your last words will NOT be, “I wish I had spent more time in the office.” If you’ve been working too much, this is the year to start spending more time enjoying your life, your friends and family, and the world. As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Dr. Eastern practices dermatology and dermatologic surgery in Belleville, N.J. He is the author of numerous articles and textbook chapters, and is a longtime monthly columnist for Dermatology News. Write to him at [email protected].

Bribery really is the solution to all of life’s problems

Breaking news: The United States has a bit of an obesity epidemic. Okay, maybe not so breaking news. But it’s a problem we’ve been struggling with for a very long time. Part of the issue is that there really is no secret to weight loss. Pretty much anything can work if you’re committed. The millions of diets floating around are testament to this idea.

The problem of losing weight is amplified if you don’t rake in the big bucks. Lower-income individuals often can’t afford healthy superfoods, and they’re often too busy to spend time at classes, exercising, or following programs. A group of researchers at New York University has offered up an alternate solution to encourage weight loss in low-income people: Pay them.

Specifically, pay them for losing weight. A reward, if you will. The researchers recruited several hundred lower-income people and split them into three groups. All participants received a free 1-year membership to a gym and weight-loss program, as well as food journals and fitness devices, but one group received payment (on average, about $300 overall) for attending meetings, exercising a certain amount every week, or weighing themselves twice a week. About 40% of people in this group lost 5% of their body weight after 6 months, twice as many as in the group that did not receive payment for performing these tasks.

The big winners, however, were those in the third group. They also received the free stuff, but the researchers offered them a more simple and direct bribe: Lose 5% of your weight over 6 months and we’ll pay you. The reward? About $450 on average, and it worked very well, with half this group losing the weight after 6 months. That said, after a year something like a fifth of this group put the weight back on, bringing them in line with the group that was paid to perform tasks. Still, both groups outperformed the control group, which received no money.

The takeaway from this research is pretty obvious. Pay people a fair price to do something, and they’ll do it. This is a lesson that has absolutely no relevance in the modern world. Nope, none whatsoever. We all receive completely fair wages. We all have plenty of money to pay for things. Everything is fine.
 

More green space, less medicine

Have you heard of the 3-30-300 rule? Proposed by urban forester Cecil Konijnendijk, it’s become the rule of thumb for urban planners and other foresters into getting more green space in populated areas. A recent study has found that people who lived within this 3-30-300 rule had better mental health and less medication use.

rawpixel

If you’re not an urban forester, however, you may not know what the 3-30-300 rule is. But it’s pretty simple, people should be able to see at least three trees from their home, have 30% tree canopy in their neighborhood, and have 300 Spartans to defend against the Persian army.

We may have made that last one up. It’s actually have a green space or park within 300 meters of your home.

In the new study, only 4.7% of people surveyed lived in an area that followed all three rules. About 62% of the surveyed lived with a green space at least 300 meters away, 43% had at least three trees within 15 meters from their home, and a rather pitiful 9% had adequate tree canopy coverage in their neighborhood.

Greater adherence to the 3-30-300 rule was associated with fewer visits to the psychologist, with 8.3% of the participants reporting a psychologist visit in the last year. The data come from a sample of a little over 3,000 Barcelona residents aged 15-97 who were randomly selected to participate in the Barcelona Public Health Agency Survey.

“There is an urgent need to provide citizens with more green space,” said Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, lead author of the study. “We may need to tear out asphalt and plant more trees, which would not only improve health, but also reduce heat island effects and contribute to carbon capture.”

The main goal and message is that more green space is good for everyone. So if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, take a breather and sit somewhere green. Or call those 300 Spartans and get them to start knocking some buildings down.
 

Said the toilet to the engineer: Do you hear what I hear?

A mythical hero’s journey took Dorothy along the yellow brick road to find the Wizard of Oz. Huckleberry Finn used a raft to float down the Mississippi River. Luke Skywalker did most of his traveling between planets. For the rest of us, the journey may be just a bit shorter.

Maia Gatlin

Also a bit less heroic. Unless, of course, you’re prepping for a colonoscopy. Yup, we’re headed to the toilet, but not just any toilet. This toilet was the subject of a presentation at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, titled “The feces thesis: Using machine learning to detect diarrhea,” and that presentation was the hero’s journey of Maia Gatlin, PhD, a research engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

She and her team attached a noninvasive microphone sensor to a toilet, and now they can identify bowel diseases without collecting any identifiable information.

The audio sample of an excretion event is “transformed into a spectrogram, which essentially captures the sound in an image. Different events produce different features in the audio and the spectrogram. For example, urination creates a consistent tone, while defecation may have a singular tone. In contrast, diarrhea is more random,” they explained in the written statement.

They used a machine learning algorithm to classify each spectrogram based on its features. “The algorithm’s performance was tested against data with and without background noises to make sure it was learning the right sound features, regardless of the sensor’s environment,” Dr. Gatlin and associates wrote.

Their goal is to use the toilet sensor in areas where cholera is common to prevent the spread of disease. After that, who knows? “Perhaps someday, our algorithm can be used with existing in-home smart devices to monitor one’s own bowel movements and health!” she suggested.

That would be a heroic toilet indeed.

Bribery really is the solution to all of life’s problems

Breaking news: The United States has a bit of an obesity epidemic. Okay, maybe not so breaking news. But it’s a problem we’ve been struggling with for a very long time. Part of the issue is that there really is no secret to weight loss. Pretty much anything can work if you’re committed. The millions of diets floating around are testament to this idea.

The problem of losing weight is amplified if you don’t rake in the big bucks. Lower-income individuals often can’t afford healthy superfoods, and they’re often too busy to spend time at classes, exercising, or following programs. A group of researchers at New York University has offered up an alternate solution to encourage weight loss in low-income people: Pay them.

Specifically, pay them for losing weight. A reward, if you will. The researchers recruited several hundred lower-income people and split them into three groups. All participants received a free 1-year membership to a gym and weight-loss program, as well as food journals and fitness devices, but one group received payment (on average, about $300 overall) for attending meetings, exercising a certain amount every week, or weighing themselves twice a week. About 40% of people in this group lost 5% of their body weight after 6 months, twice as many as in the group that did not receive payment for performing these tasks.

The big winners, however, were those in the third group. They also received the free stuff, but the researchers offered them a more simple and direct bribe: Lose 5% of your weight over 6 months and we’ll pay you. The reward? About $450 on average, and it worked very well, with half this group losing the weight after 6 months. That said, after a year something like a fifth of this group put the weight back on, bringing them in line with the group that was paid to perform tasks. Still, both groups outperformed the control group, which received no money.

The takeaway from this research is pretty obvious. Pay people a fair price to do something, and they’ll do it. This is a lesson that has absolutely no relevance in the modern world. Nope, none whatsoever. We all receive completely fair wages. We all have plenty of money to pay for things. Everything is fine.
 

More green space, less medicine

Have you heard of the 3-30-300 rule? Proposed by urban forester Cecil Konijnendijk, it’s become the rule of thumb for urban planners and other foresters into getting more green space in populated areas. A recent study has found that people who lived within this 3-30-300 rule had better mental health and less medication use.

rawpixel

If you’re not an urban forester, however, you may not know what the 3-30-300 rule is. But it’s pretty simple, people should be able to see at least three trees from their home, have 30% tree canopy in their neighborhood, and have 300 Spartans to defend against the Persian army.

We may have made that last one up. It’s actually have a green space or park within 300 meters of your home.

In the new study, only 4.7% of people surveyed lived in an area that followed all three rules. About 62% of the surveyed lived with a green space at least 300 meters away, 43% had at least three trees within 15 meters from their home, and a rather pitiful 9% had adequate tree canopy coverage in their neighborhood.

Greater adherence to the 3-30-300 rule was associated with fewer visits to the psychologist, with 8.3% of the participants reporting a psychologist visit in the last year. The data come from a sample of a little over 3,000 Barcelona residents aged 15-97 who were randomly selected to participate in the Barcelona Public Health Agency Survey.

“There is an urgent need to provide citizens with more green space,” said Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, lead author of the study. “We may need to tear out asphalt and plant more trees, which would not only improve health, but also reduce heat island effects and contribute to carbon capture.”

The main goal and message is that more green space is good for everyone. So if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, take a breather and sit somewhere green. Or call those 300 Spartans and get them to start knocking some buildings down.
 

Said the toilet to the engineer: Do you hear what I hear?

A mythical hero’s journey took Dorothy along the yellow brick road to find the Wizard of Oz. Huckleberry Finn used a raft to float down the Mississippi River. Luke Skywalker did most of his traveling between planets. For the rest of us, the journey may be just a bit shorter.

Maia Gatlin

Also a bit less heroic. Unless, of course, you’re prepping for a colonoscopy. Yup, we’re headed to the toilet, but not just any toilet. This toilet was the subject of a presentation at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, titled “The feces thesis: Using machine learning to detect diarrhea,” and that presentation was the hero’s journey of Maia Gatlin, PhD, a research engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

She and her team attached a noninvasive microphone sensor to a toilet, and now they can identify bowel diseases without collecting any identifiable information.

The audio sample of an excretion event is “transformed into a spectrogram, which essentially captures the sound in an image. Different events produce different features in the audio and the spectrogram. For example, urination creates a consistent tone, while defecation may have a singular tone. In contrast, diarrhea is more random,” they explained in the written statement.

They used a machine learning algorithm to classify each spectrogram based on its features. “The algorithm’s performance was tested against data with and without background noises to make sure it was learning the right sound features, regardless of the sensor’s environment,” Dr. Gatlin and associates wrote.

Their goal is to use the toilet sensor in areas where cholera is common to prevent the spread of disease. After that, who knows? “Perhaps someday, our algorithm can be used with existing in-home smart devices to monitor one’s own bowel movements and health!” she suggested.

That would be a heroic toilet indeed.

Bribery really is the solution to all of life’s problems

Breaking news: The United States has a bit of an obesity epidemic. Okay, maybe not so breaking news. But it’s a problem we’ve been struggling with for a very long time. Part of the issue is that there really is no secret to weight loss. Pretty much anything can work if you’re committed. The millions of diets floating around are testament to this idea.

The problem of losing weight is amplified if you don’t rake in the big bucks. Lower-income individuals often can’t afford healthy superfoods, and they’re often too busy to spend time at classes, exercising, or following programs. A group of researchers at New York University has offered up an alternate solution to encourage weight loss in low-income people: Pay them.

Specifically, pay them for losing weight. A reward, if you will. The researchers recruited several hundred lower-income people and split them into three groups. All participants received a free 1-year membership to a gym and weight-loss program, as well as food journals and fitness devices, but one group received payment (on average, about $300 overall) for attending meetings, exercising a certain amount every week, or weighing themselves twice a week. About 40% of people in this group lost 5% of their body weight after 6 months, twice as many as in the group that did not receive payment for performing these tasks.

The big winners, however, were those in the third group. They also received the free stuff, but the researchers offered them a more simple and direct bribe: Lose 5% of your weight over 6 months and we’ll pay you. The reward? About $450 on average, and it worked very well, with half this group losing the weight after 6 months. That said, after a year something like a fifth of this group put the weight back on, bringing them in line with the group that was paid to perform tasks. Still, both groups outperformed the control group, which received no money.

The takeaway from this research is pretty obvious. Pay people a fair price to do something, and they’ll do it. This is a lesson that has absolutely no relevance in the modern world. Nope, none whatsoever. We all receive completely fair wages. We all have plenty of money to pay for things. Everything is fine.
 

More green space, less medicine

Have you heard of the 3-30-300 rule? Proposed by urban forester Cecil Konijnendijk, it’s become the rule of thumb for urban planners and other foresters into getting more green space in populated areas. A recent study has found that people who lived within this 3-30-300 rule had better mental health and less medication use.

rawpixel

If you’re not an urban forester, however, you may not know what the 3-30-300 rule is. But it’s pretty simple, people should be able to see at least three trees from their home, have 30% tree canopy in their neighborhood, and have 300 Spartans to defend against the Persian army.

We may have made that last one up. It’s actually have a green space or park within 300 meters of your home.

In the new study, only 4.7% of people surveyed lived in an area that followed all three rules. About 62% of the surveyed lived with a green space at least 300 meters away, 43% had at least three trees within 15 meters from their home, and a rather pitiful 9% had adequate tree canopy coverage in their neighborhood.

Greater adherence to the 3-30-300 rule was associated with fewer visits to the psychologist, with 8.3% of the participants reporting a psychologist visit in the last year. The data come from a sample of a little over 3,000 Barcelona residents aged 15-97 who were randomly selected to participate in the Barcelona Public Health Agency Survey.

“There is an urgent need to provide citizens with more green space,” said Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, lead author of the study. “We may need to tear out asphalt and plant more trees, which would not only improve health, but also reduce heat island effects and contribute to carbon capture.”

The main goal and message is that more green space is good for everyone. So if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed, take a breather and sit somewhere green. Or call those 300 Spartans and get them to start knocking some buildings down.
 

Said the toilet to the engineer: Do you hear what I hear?

A mythical hero’s journey took Dorothy along the yellow brick road to find the Wizard of Oz. Huckleberry Finn used a raft to float down the Mississippi River. Luke Skywalker did most of his traveling between planets. For the rest of us, the journey may be just a bit shorter.

Maia Gatlin

Also a bit less heroic. Unless, of course, you’re prepping for a colonoscopy. Yup, we’re headed to the toilet, but not just any toilet. This toilet was the subject of a presentation at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, titled “The feces thesis: Using machine learning to detect diarrhea,” and that presentation was the hero’s journey of Maia Gatlin, PhD, a research engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

She and her team attached a noninvasive microphone sensor to a toilet, and now they can identify bowel diseases without collecting any identifiable information.

The audio sample of an excretion event is “transformed into a spectrogram, which essentially captures the sound in an image. Different events produce different features in the audio and the spectrogram. For example, urination creates a consistent tone, while defecation may have a singular tone. In contrast, diarrhea is more random,” they explained in the written statement.

They used a machine learning algorithm to classify each spectrogram based on its features. “The algorithm’s performance was tested against data with and without background noises to make sure it was learning the right sound features, regardless of the sensor’s environment,” Dr. Gatlin and associates wrote.

Their goal is to use the toilet sensor in areas where cholera is common to prevent the spread of disease. After that, who knows? “Perhaps someday, our algorithm can be used with existing in-home smart devices to monitor one’s own bowel movements and health!” she suggested.

That would be a heroic toilet indeed.

A systematic review of nutritional supplements for hair loss finds that a wide range of the products have potential but that the studies could not provide definitive evidence of safety and effectiveness because of small sample sizes, heterogeneity of hair loss types in study subjects, or other limitations.

The review, published online in JAMA Dermatology, notes that “Twelve of the 20 nutritional interventions had high-quality studies suggesting objectively evaluated effectiveness.”

It is “ground breaking,” in part because of its breadth and depth, said Eva Simmons-O’Brien, MD, a dermatologist in Towson, Md., who often recommends supplements for her patients with hair loss. “It basically kind of vindicates what some of us have been doing for a number of years in terms of treating hair loss,” she told this news organization. “It should hopefully make it more commonplace for dermatologists to consider using nutritional supplements as an adjuvant to treating hair loss,” added Dr. Simmons-O’Brien.

The review “is very helpful,” agreed Lynne J. Goldberg, MD, professor of dermatology and pathology and laboratory medicine at Boston University. Dr. Goldberg noted that many patients are already taking supplements and want to know whether they are safe and effective. The review “points out what the problems are; it talks about what the individual ingredients are and what they do, what the problems are; and it concluded that some people may find these helpful. Which is exactly what I tell my patients,” said Dr. Goldberg, who is also director of the Hair Clinic at Boston Medical Center.

“For patients who are highly motivated and eager to try this, we’re hoping that this systematic review serves as a foundation to have a conversation,” study coauthor Arash Mostaghimi, MD, MPA, MPH, of the department of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, told this news organization. “When there’s medical uncertainty and the question is how much risk is one willing to take, the most important thing to do is to present the data and engage in shared decision-making with the patient,” noted Dr. Mostaghimi, who is also director of the inpatient dermatology consult service at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.
 

Surprising effectiveness

Going into the study, “we felt it would be likely that majority of nutritional supplements would either not be effective or not studied,” he said.

Dr. Mostaghimi and his coauthors conducted the study because so many patients take nutritional supplements to address hair loss, he said. An initial literature survey yielded more than 6,300 citations, but after screening and reviews, the authors included 30 articles for evaluation.

The review begins with a look at studies of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens), a botanical compound thought to inhibit the enzyme 5-alpha reductase (5AR), which converts testosterone to dihydroxytestosterone (DHT). DHT is a mediator of androgenic alopecia (AGA). The studies suggest that the compound might stabilize hair loss, “although its effect is likely less than that of finasteride,” write the authors. They also note that side effects associated with finasteride, such as sexual dysfunction, were also observed with saw palmetto “but to a lesser extent.”

For AGA, pumpkin seed oil may also be effective and a “potential alternative” to finasteride for AGA, and Forti5, a nutritional supplement that includes botanical 5AR inhibitors and other ingredients, had favorable effects in one study, the authors write. But neither has been compared to finasteride, and the Forti5 study lacked a control group.

The review also examines the micronutrients vitamin D, zinc, B vitamins, and antioxidants. Low levels of vitamin D have been associated with alopecia areata (AA), AGA, and telogen effluvium (TE) in some studies, and zinc deficiencies have been associated with TE, hair breakage, and thinning, according to the review. A single-arm vitamin D study showed improved results at 6 months for women with TE, but there was no control group and TE is self-resolving, the authors add. Studies in patients with normal zinc levels at baseline who had AA or hair loss showed significant hair regrowth and increased hair thickness and density, but the trials were a mishmash of controls and no controls and relied on self-perceived hair-loss data.

Larger more rigorous studies should be done to evaluate zinc’s effectiveness with AA, the authors comment.

Many patients take vitamin B7 (biotin) for hair loss. It has not been studied on its own but was an ingredient in some supplements in the review. Dr. Simmons-O’Brien said that biotin won’t result in new hair growth but that it can help strengthen the new hairs that grow as a result of other therapies. Both she and the study authors note that the Food and Drug Administration has warned against biotin supplementation because it can interfere with troponin and other test results.

The review also finds that immunomodulators –such as Chinese herbal extracts from paeony and glycyrrhizin – were effective in severe AA. Growth hormone modulators targeting deficiencies in insulin growth factor 1 or growth hormone are also promising. Studies of the modulators capsaicin and isoflavones – used topically – spurred hair growth, the authors write.

Products containing marine protein supplements, including Viviscal and Nourkrin, appeared effective in increasing hair counts in men and women, but the studies were funded by the manufacturer and were not well controlled. Side effects with Viviscal included bloating, according to the review.

The multi-ingredient supplements Nutrafol, Omni-Three, Apple Nutraceutical, and Lambdapil were also included in the review. Only Omni-Three showed no effectiveness, but studies of the other supplements had various limitations, including lack of controls and small sample sizes.
 

Complicated problem, multiple solutions

Given the many reasons for hair loss, multiple solutions are needed, the dermatologists note.

Dr. Mostaghimi said that he’s still a bit skeptical that supplements work as consistently as described or as well as described, given that he and his coauthors were unable to find any negative studies. In talking with patients who are taking supplements, he said that his first aim is to make sure they are safe. At least the supplements in the review have been studied for safety, he added.

He will encourage replacement of vitamin D or zinc or other vitamins or minerals if patients are deficient but said that he does not “actively encourage supplementation.”

Dr. Simmons-O’Brien said that, when evaluating patients with hair loss, she orders lab tests to determine whether the patient has anemia or a thyroid issue or deficiencies in vitamins or minerals or other nutritional deficiencies, asks about diet and styling practices, and takes a scalp biopsy. It is not uncommon to recommend supplementation on the basis of those findings, she added.

“As a hair-loss specialist, my job is to treat the patient at their level, in their framework, in their comfort zone,” said Dr. Goldberg. Some patients don’t want to take medications for hair loss, so she might recommend supplements in those cases but tells patients that they aren’t well studied.

She added that it can be hard to tell whether a supplement is working, particularly if it has multiple ingredients.

Dr. Mostaghimi reported consulting fees from Pfizer, Concert, Lilly, Hims and Hers, Equillium, AbbVie, Digital Diagnostics, and Bioniz and grants from Pfizer, all outside the submitted work. In addition, Dr. Mostaghimi disclosed that he is an associate editor of JAMA Dermatology but was not involved in any of the decisions regarding the review of the manuscript or its acceptance. No other disclosures were reported by the other study authors. Dr. Goldberg reported no disclosures. Dr. Simmons-O›Brien is a medical consultant for Isdin, but not for hair products.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

A systematic review of nutritional supplements for hair loss finds that a wide range of the products have potential but that the studies could not provide definitive evidence of safety and effectiveness because of small sample sizes, heterogeneity of hair loss types in study subjects, or other limitations.

The review, published online in JAMA Dermatology, notes that “Twelve of the 20 nutritional interventions had high-quality studies suggesting objectively evaluated effectiveness.”

It is “ground breaking,” in part because of its breadth and depth, said Eva Simmons-O’Brien, MD, a dermatologist in Towson, Md., who often recommends supplements for her patients with hair loss. “It basically kind of vindicates what some of us have been doing for a number of years in terms of treating hair loss,” she told this news organization. “It should hopefully make it more commonplace for dermatologists to consider using nutritional supplements as an adjuvant to treating hair loss,” added Dr. Simmons-O’Brien.

The review “is very helpful,” agreed Lynne J. Goldberg, MD, professor of dermatology and pathology and laboratory medicine at Boston University. Dr. Goldberg noted that many patients are already taking supplements and want to know whether they are safe and effective. The review “points out what the problems are; it talks about what the individual ingredients are and what they do, what the problems are; and it concluded that some people may find these helpful. Which is exactly what I tell my patients,” said Dr. Goldberg, who is also director of the Hair Clinic at Boston Medical Center.

“For patients who are highly motivated and eager to try this, we’re hoping that this systematic review serves as a foundation to have a conversation,” study coauthor Arash Mostaghimi, MD, MPA, MPH, of the department of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, told this news organization. “When there’s medical uncertainty and the question is how much risk is one willing to take, the most important thing to do is to present the data and engage in shared decision-making with the patient,” noted Dr. Mostaghimi, who is also director of the inpatient dermatology consult service at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.
 

Surprising effectiveness

Going into the study, “we felt it would be likely that majority of nutritional supplements would either not be effective or not studied,” he said.

Dr. Mostaghimi and his coauthors conducted the study because so many patients take nutritional supplements to address hair loss, he said. An initial literature survey yielded more than 6,300 citations, but after screening and reviews, the authors included 30 articles for evaluation.

The review begins with a look at studies of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens), a botanical compound thought to inhibit the enzyme 5-alpha reductase (5AR), which converts testosterone to dihydroxytestosterone (DHT). DHT is a mediator of androgenic alopecia (AGA). The studies suggest that the compound might stabilize hair loss, “although its effect is likely less than that of finasteride,” write the authors. They also note that side effects associated with finasteride, such as sexual dysfunction, were also observed with saw palmetto “but to a lesser extent.”

For AGA, pumpkin seed oil may also be effective and a “potential alternative” to finasteride for AGA, and Forti5, a nutritional supplement that includes botanical 5AR inhibitors and other ingredients, had favorable effects in one study, the authors write. But neither has been compared to finasteride, and the Forti5 study lacked a control group.

The review also examines the micronutrients vitamin D, zinc, B vitamins, and antioxidants. Low levels of vitamin D have been associated with alopecia areata (AA), AGA, and telogen effluvium (TE) in some studies, and zinc deficiencies have been associated with TE, hair breakage, and thinning, according to the review. A single-arm vitamin D study showed improved results at 6 months for women with TE, but there was no control group and TE is self-resolving, the authors add. Studies in patients with normal zinc levels at baseline who had AA or hair loss showed significant hair regrowth and increased hair thickness and density, but the trials were a mishmash of controls and no controls and relied on self-perceived hair-loss data.

Larger more rigorous studies should be done to evaluate zinc’s effectiveness with AA, the authors comment.

Many patients take vitamin B7 (biotin) for hair loss. It has not been studied on its own but was an ingredient in some supplements in the review. Dr. Simmons-O’Brien said that biotin won’t result in new hair growth but that it can help strengthen the new hairs that grow as a result of other therapies. Both she and the study authors note that the Food and Drug Administration has warned against biotin supplementation because it can interfere with troponin and other test results.

The review also finds that immunomodulators –such as Chinese herbal extracts from paeony and glycyrrhizin – were effective in severe AA. Growth hormone modulators targeting deficiencies in insulin growth factor 1 or growth hormone are also promising. Studies of the modulators capsaicin and isoflavones – used topically – spurred hair growth, the authors write.

Products containing marine protein supplements, including Viviscal and Nourkrin, appeared effective in increasing hair counts in men and women, but the studies were funded by the manufacturer and were not well controlled. Side effects with Viviscal included bloating, according to the review.

The multi-ingredient supplements Nutrafol, Omni-Three, Apple Nutraceutical, and Lambdapil were also included in the review. Only Omni-Three showed no effectiveness, but studies of the other supplements had various limitations, including lack of controls and small sample sizes.
 

Complicated problem, multiple solutions

Given the many reasons for hair loss, multiple solutions are needed, the dermatologists note.

Dr. Mostaghimi said that he’s still a bit skeptical that supplements work as consistently as described or as well as described, given that he and his coauthors were unable to find any negative studies. In talking with patients who are taking supplements, he said that his first aim is to make sure they are safe. At least the supplements in the review have been studied for safety, he added.

He will encourage replacement of vitamin D or zinc or other vitamins or minerals if patients are deficient but said that he does not “actively encourage supplementation.”

Dr. Simmons-O’Brien said that, when evaluating patients with hair loss, she orders lab tests to determine whether the patient has anemia or a thyroid issue or deficiencies in vitamins or minerals or other nutritional deficiencies, asks about diet and styling practices, and takes a scalp biopsy. It is not uncommon to recommend supplementation on the basis of those findings, she added.

“As a hair-loss specialist, my job is to treat the patient at their level, in their framework, in their comfort zone,” said Dr. Goldberg. Some patients don’t want to take medications for hair loss, so she might recommend supplements in those cases but tells patients that they aren’t well studied.

She added that it can be hard to tell whether a supplement is working, particularly if it has multiple ingredients.

Dr. Mostaghimi reported consulting fees from Pfizer, Concert, Lilly, Hims and Hers, Equillium, AbbVie, Digital Diagnostics, and Bioniz and grants from Pfizer, all outside the submitted work. In addition, Dr. Mostaghimi disclosed that he is an associate editor of JAMA Dermatology but was not involved in any of the decisions regarding the review of the manuscript or its acceptance. No other disclosures were reported by the other study authors. Dr. Goldberg reported no disclosures. Dr. Simmons-O›Brien is a medical consultant for Isdin, but not for hair products.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

A systematic review of nutritional supplements for hair loss finds that a wide range of the products have potential but that the studies could not provide definitive evidence of safety and effectiveness because of small sample sizes, heterogeneity of hair loss types in study subjects, or other limitations.

The review, published online in JAMA Dermatology, notes that “Twelve of the 20 nutritional interventions had high-quality studies suggesting objectively evaluated effectiveness.”

It is “ground breaking,” in part because of its breadth and depth, said Eva Simmons-O’Brien, MD, a dermatologist in Towson, Md., who often recommends supplements for her patients with hair loss. “It basically kind of vindicates what some of us have been doing for a number of years in terms of treating hair loss,” she told this news organization. “It should hopefully make it more commonplace for dermatologists to consider using nutritional supplements as an adjuvant to treating hair loss,” added Dr. Simmons-O’Brien.

The review “is very helpful,” agreed Lynne J. Goldberg, MD, professor of dermatology and pathology and laboratory medicine at Boston University. Dr. Goldberg noted that many patients are already taking supplements and want to know whether they are safe and effective. The review “points out what the problems are; it talks about what the individual ingredients are and what they do, what the problems are; and it concluded that some people may find these helpful. Which is exactly what I tell my patients,” said Dr. Goldberg, who is also director of the Hair Clinic at Boston Medical Center.

“For patients who are highly motivated and eager to try this, we’re hoping that this systematic review serves as a foundation to have a conversation,” study coauthor Arash Mostaghimi, MD, MPA, MPH, of the department of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, told this news organization. “When there’s medical uncertainty and the question is how much risk is one willing to take, the most important thing to do is to present the data and engage in shared decision-making with the patient,” noted Dr. Mostaghimi, who is also director of the inpatient dermatology consult service at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston.
 

Surprising effectiveness

Going into the study, “we felt it would be likely that majority of nutritional supplements would either not be effective or not studied,” he said.

Dr. Mostaghimi and his coauthors conducted the study because so many patients take nutritional supplements to address hair loss, he said. An initial literature survey yielded more than 6,300 citations, but after screening and reviews, the authors included 30 articles for evaluation.

The review begins with a look at studies of saw palmetto (Serenoa repens), a botanical compound thought to inhibit the enzyme 5-alpha reductase (5AR), which converts testosterone to dihydroxytestosterone (DHT). DHT is a mediator of androgenic alopecia (AGA). The studies suggest that the compound might stabilize hair loss, “although its effect is likely less than that of finasteride,” write the authors. They also note that side effects associated with finasteride, such as sexual dysfunction, were also observed with saw palmetto “but to a lesser extent.”

For AGA, pumpkin seed oil may also be effective and a “potential alternative” to finasteride for AGA, and Forti5, a nutritional supplement that includes botanical 5AR inhibitors and other ingredients, had favorable effects in one study, the authors write. But neither has been compared to finasteride, and the Forti5 study lacked a control group.

The review also examines the micronutrients vitamin D, zinc, B vitamins, and antioxidants. Low levels of vitamin D have been associated with alopecia areata (AA), AGA, and telogen effluvium (TE) in some studies, and zinc deficiencies have been associated with TE, hair breakage, and thinning, according to the review. A single-arm vitamin D study showed improved results at 6 months for women with TE, but there was no control group and TE is self-resolving, the authors add. Studies in patients with normal zinc levels at baseline who had AA or hair loss showed significant hair regrowth and increased hair thickness and density, but the trials were a mishmash of controls and no controls and relied on self-perceived hair-loss data.

Larger more rigorous studies should be done to evaluate zinc’s effectiveness with AA, the authors comment.

Many patients take vitamin B7 (biotin) for hair loss. It has not been studied on its own but was an ingredient in some supplements in the review. Dr. Simmons-O’Brien said that biotin won’t result in new hair growth but that it can help strengthen the new hairs that grow as a result of other therapies. Both she and the study authors note that the Food and Drug Administration has warned against biotin supplementation because it can interfere with troponin and other test results.

The review also finds that immunomodulators –such as Chinese herbal extracts from paeony and glycyrrhizin – were effective in severe AA. Growth hormone modulators targeting deficiencies in insulin growth factor 1 or growth hormone are also promising. Studies of the modulators capsaicin and isoflavones – used topically – spurred hair growth, the authors write.

Products containing marine protein supplements, including Viviscal and Nourkrin, appeared effective in increasing hair counts in men and women, but the studies were funded by the manufacturer and were not well controlled. Side effects with Viviscal included bloating, according to the review.

The multi-ingredient supplements Nutrafol, Omni-Three, Apple Nutraceutical, and Lambdapil were also included in the review. Only Omni-Three showed no effectiveness, but studies of the other supplements had various limitations, including lack of controls and small sample sizes.
 

Complicated problem, multiple solutions

Given the many reasons for hair loss, multiple solutions are needed, the dermatologists note.

Dr. Mostaghimi said that he’s still a bit skeptical that supplements work as consistently as described or as well as described, given that he and his coauthors were unable to find any negative studies. In talking with patients who are taking supplements, he said that his first aim is to make sure they are safe. At least the supplements in the review have been studied for safety, he added.

He will encourage replacement of vitamin D or zinc or other vitamins or minerals if patients are deficient but said that he does not “actively encourage supplementation.”

Dr. Simmons-O’Brien said that, when evaluating patients with hair loss, she orders lab tests to determine whether the patient has anemia or a thyroid issue or deficiencies in vitamins or minerals or other nutritional deficiencies, asks about diet and styling practices, and takes a scalp biopsy. It is not uncommon to recommend supplementation on the basis of those findings, she added.

“As a hair-loss specialist, my job is to treat the patient at their level, in their framework, in their comfort zone,” said Dr. Goldberg. Some patients don’t want to take medications for hair loss, so she might recommend supplements in those cases but tells patients that they aren’t well studied.

She added that it can be hard to tell whether a supplement is working, particularly if it has multiple ingredients.

Dr. Mostaghimi reported consulting fees from Pfizer, Concert, Lilly, Hims and Hers, Equillium, AbbVie, Digital Diagnostics, and Bioniz and grants from Pfizer, all outside the submitted work. In addition, Dr. Mostaghimi disclosed that he is an associate editor of JAMA Dermatology but was not involved in any of the decisions regarding the review of the manuscript or its acceptance. No other disclosures were reported by the other study authors. Dr. Goldberg reported no disclosures. Dr. Simmons-O›Brien is a medical consultant for Isdin, but not for hair products.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Asking knee osteoarthritis patients a simple question – do you have difficulty climbing stairs? – may predict the risk of future functional limitation, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology. Finding out that the patient has difficulty also opens avenues for further evaluation and intervention, said Jason Jakiela, a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware, Newark, who led the study. “We like to view it as a kind of yellow flag,” Mr. Jakiela said in an interview.

Another expert agreed. “I think this is useful for clinical rheumatologists,” said C. Kent Kwoh, MD, professor of medicine and medical imaging at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and director of the University of Arizona Arthritis Center. He commented on the study findings but was not involved in the study. Another common question asked of OA patients, about pain, may not be as useful as asking about difficulty climbing stairs, he said. “Their pain level can go up and down and can be quite varied.”

decade3d/Thinkstock

Study details, results

Mr. Jakiela and his team, including Daniel White, PT, ScD, MSC, associate professor of physical therapy at the University of Delaware, Newark, used data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI). They assessed stair climbing difficulty at baseline with the question: Does your health now limit you in climbing several flights of stairs? Respondents could answer that they were limited a lot, a little, or not at all.

The researchers evaluated functional limitation using two measures: Walking speed and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index physical function (WOMAC-PF) scores. A walking speed of < 1.22 m/s over 20 meters, the speed needed to safely cross a timed intersection, represented poor function. A WOMAC-PF score of 28/68 or more was also used to define low functioning.

The analyses included only people free of functional limitations at baseline. Each measure was conducted at the start and then at 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, and 96 months’ follow-up visits.

While 2,952 participants (mean age 60.1, 54% female, mean body mass index 27.9) were in the walking speed sample, 3,983 participants (mean age 61.2, 57% female, mean BMI 28.2) were in the WOMAC-PF sample.

Starting the conversation

The question about stair climbing difficulty is a good “jumping-off point,” Mr. Jakiela said. “It opens up a line of questioning.” With knee OA, stair climbing difficulty is often the first reported limitation. That difficulty could capture a variety of issues, he said. Patients could be struggling with strength issues, cardiovascular problems, or balance deficits, for instance.

It signals there may be a trajectory of slow decline coming in this patient, Mr. Jakiela said.

“It’s a signal that something is not right,” Dr. White said in an interview. “We don’t know what is wrong.” While questions about stairs have routinely been asked of OA patients, the study findings suggest the answer to the question about having difficulty could help predict a patient’s future course, he said.

After patients reported a little or a lot of difficulty with stair climbing, the average time to reach functional limitation status was about 3 years, Mr. Jakiela said. That gives health care providers time to ask more questions about the patient’s condition and potentially intervene, depending on the details of the difficulty. If it’s a balance issue, physical therapy might help, for example.

While gait speed is a tried-and-true indication, collecting answers about stair climbing difficulty is easier and quicker for clinicians than assessing gait speed, which requires more time as well as office space, Mr. Jakiela said. It’s also intuitive for the patients to recall, the researchers said.
 

More practical takeaways

Finding out whether functional limitation is likely, based on the stair question, can help health care providers consider nonpharmacologic interventions, Dr. Kwoh agreed, such as physical therapy or braces. “It doesn’t have to be drugs. We have limited drugs for OA at the moment. We don’t have a so-called DMARD drug [for OA].”

NSAIDs have side effects, and people are very familiar with the issues of opioids, he said. It’s important, he added, for the health care provider, if referring to a physical therapist, to find the right one. To help those dealing with knee OA, a PT in sports medicine might be a good choice, he said.

Mr. Jakiela has no disclosures. Dr. Kwoh and Dr. White have no relevant disclosures.

Asking knee osteoarthritis patients a simple question – do you have difficulty climbing stairs? – may predict the risk of future functional limitation, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology. Finding out that the patient has difficulty also opens avenues for further evaluation and intervention, said Jason Jakiela, a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware, Newark, who led the study. “We like to view it as a kind of yellow flag,” Mr. Jakiela said in an interview.

Another expert agreed. “I think this is useful for clinical rheumatologists,” said C. Kent Kwoh, MD, professor of medicine and medical imaging at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and director of the University of Arizona Arthritis Center. He commented on the study findings but was not involved in the study. Another common question asked of OA patients, about pain, may not be as useful as asking about difficulty climbing stairs, he said. “Their pain level can go up and down and can be quite varied.”

decade3d/Thinkstock

Study details, results

Mr. Jakiela and his team, including Daniel White, PT, ScD, MSC, associate professor of physical therapy at the University of Delaware, Newark, used data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI). They assessed stair climbing difficulty at baseline with the question: Does your health now limit you in climbing several flights of stairs? Respondents could answer that they were limited a lot, a little, or not at all.

The researchers evaluated functional limitation using two measures: Walking speed and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index physical function (WOMAC-PF) scores. A walking speed of < 1.22 m/s over 20 meters, the speed needed to safely cross a timed intersection, represented poor function. A WOMAC-PF score of 28/68 or more was also used to define low functioning.

The analyses included only people free of functional limitations at baseline. Each measure was conducted at the start and then at 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, and 96 months’ follow-up visits.

While 2,952 participants (mean age 60.1, 54% female, mean body mass index 27.9) were in the walking speed sample, 3,983 participants (mean age 61.2, 57% female, mean BMI 28.2) were in the WOMAC-PF sample.

Starting the conversation

The question about stair climbing difficulty is a good “jumping-off point,” Mr. Jakiela said. “It opens up a line of questioning.” With knee OA, stair climbing difficulty is often the first reported limitation. That difficulty could capture a variety of issues, he said. Patients could be struggling with strength issues, cardiovascular problems, or balance deficits, for instance.

It signals there may be a trajectory of slow decline coming in this patient, Mr. Jakiela said.

“It’s a signal that something is not right,” Dr. White said in an interview. “We don’t know what is wrong.” While questions about stairs have routinely been asked of OA patients, the study findings suggest the answer to the question about having difficulty could help predict a patient’s future course, he said.

After patients reported a little or a lot of difficulty with stair climbing, the average time to reach functional limitation status was about 3 years, Mr. Jakiela said. That gives health care providers time to ask more questions about the patient’s condition and potentially intervene, depending on the details of the difficulty. If it’s a balance issue, physical therapy might help, for example.

While gait speed is a tried-and-true indication, collecting answers about stair climbing difficulty is easier and quicker for clinicians than assessing gait speed, which requires more time as well as office space, Mr. Jakiela said. It’s also intuitive for the patients to recall, the researchers said.
 

More practical takeaways

Finding out whether functional limitation is likely, based on the stair question, can help health care providers consider nonpharmacologic interventions, Dr. Kwoh agreed, such as physical therapy or braces. “It doesn’t have to be drugs. We have limited drugs for OA at the moment. We don’t have a so-called DMARD drug [for OA].”

NSAIDs have side effects, and people are very familiar with the issues of opioids, he said. It’s important, he added, for the health care provider, if referring to a physical therapist, to find the right one. To help those dealing with knee OA, a PT in sports medicine might be a good choice, he said.

Mr. Jakiela has no disclosures. Dr. Kwoh and Dr. White have no relevant disclosures.

Asking knee osteoarthritis patients a simple question – do you have difficulty climbing stairs? – may predict the risk of future functional limitation, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology. Finding out that the patient has difficulty also opens avenues for further evaluation and intervention, said Jason Jakiela, a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware, Newark, who led the study. “We like to view it as a kind of yellow flag,” Mr. Jakiela said in an interview.

Another expert agreed. “I think this is useful for clinical rheumatologists,” said C. Kent Kwoh, MD, professor of medicine and medical imaging at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and director of the University of Arizona Arthritis Center. He commented on the study findings but was not involved in the study. Another common question asked of OA patients, about pain, may not be as useful as asking about difficulty climbing stairs, he said. “Their pain level can go up and down and can be quite varied.”

decade3d/Thinkstock

Study details, results

Mr. Jakiela and his team, including Daniel White, PT, ScD, MSC, associate professor of physical therapy at the University of Delaware, Newark, used data from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI). They assessed stair climbing difficulty at baseline with the question: Does your health now limit you in climbing several flights of stairs? Respondents could answer that they were limited a lot, a little, or not at all.

The researchers evaluated functional limitation using two measures: Walking speed and Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index physical function (WOMAC-PF) scores. A walking speed of < 1.22 m/s over 20 meters, the speed needed to safely cross a timed intersection, represented poor function. A WOMAC-PF score of 28/68 or more was also used to define low functioning.

The analyses included only people free of functional limitations at baseline. Each measure was conducted at the start and then at 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, and 96 months’ follow-up visits.

While 2,952 participants (mean age 60.1, 54% female, mean body mass index 27.9) were in the walking speed sample, 3,983 participants (mean age 61.2, 57% female, mean BMI 28.2) were in the WOMAC-PF sample.

Starting the conversation

The question about stair climbing difficulty is a good “jumping-off point,” Mr. Jakiela said. “It opens up a line of questioning.” With knee OA, stair climbing difficulty is often the first reported limitation. That difficulty could capture a variety of issues, he said. Patients could be struggling with strength issues, cardiovascular problems, or balance deficits, for instance.

It signals there may be a trajectory of slow decline coming in this patient, Mr. Jakiela said.

“It’s a signal that something is not right,” Dr. White said in an interview. “We don’t know what is wrong.” While questions about stairs have routinely been asked of OA patients, the study findings suggest the answer to the question about having difficulty could help predict a patient’s future course, he said.

After patients reported a little or a lot of difficulty with stair climbing, the average time to reach functional limitation status was about 3 years, Mr. Jakiela said. That gives health care providers time to ask more questions about the patient’s condition and potentially intervene, depending on the details of the difficulty. If it’s a balance issue, physical therapy might help, for example.

While gait speed is a tried-and-true indication, collecting answers about stair climbing difficulty is easier and quicker for clinicians than assessing gait speed, which requires more time as well as office space, Mr. Jakiela said. It’s also intuitive for the patients to recall, the researchers said.
 

More practical takeaways

Finding out whether functional limitation is likely, based on the stair question, can help health care providers consider nonpharmacologic interventions, Dr. Kwoh agreed, such as physical therapy or braces. “It doesn’t have to be drugs. We have limited drugs for OA at the moment. We don’t have a so-called DMARD drug [for OA].”

NSAIDs have side effects, and people are very familiar with the issues of opioids, he said. It’s important, he added, for the health care provider, if referring to a physical therapist, to find the right one. To help those dealing with knee OA, a PT in sports medicine might be a good choice, he said.

Mr. Jakiela has no disclosures. Dr. Kwoh and Dr. White have no relevant disclosures.

Patients with rheumatic disease are at least half as likely to develop long COVID after a SARS-CoV-2 infection if they have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to research published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (2022 Nov 28. doi: 10.1136/ard-2022-223439).

“Moreover, those who were vaccinated prior to getting COVID-19 had less pain and fatigue after their infection,” Zachary S. Wallace, MD, MSc, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and a study author, said in an interview. “These findings reinforce the importance of vaccination in this population.”

Messaging around the value of COVID vaccination has been confusing for some with rheumatic disease “because our concern regarding a blunted response to vaccination has led many patients to think that they do not provide much benefit if they are on immunosuppression,” Dr. Wallace said. “In our cohort, which included many patients on immunosuppression of varying degrees, being vaccinated was quite beneficial.”

Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, director of the R.J. Fasenmyer Center for Clinical Immunology and a professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, said in an interview that the study is an “extremely important contribution to our understanding of COVID-19 and its pattern of recovery in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases [IMIDs].” Remaining unanswered questions are “whether patients with IMIDs develop more frequent PASC [post–acute sequelae of COVID-19] from COVID-19 and, if so, is it milder or more severe, and does it differ in its clinical phenotype?”
 

Long COVID risk assessed at 4 weeks and 3 months after infection

The researchers prospectively tracked 280 adult patients in the Mass General Brigham health care system in the greater Boston area who had systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases and had an acute COVID-19 infection between March 2020 and July 2022. Patients were an average 53 years old, and most were White (82%) and female (80%). More than half (59%) had inflammatory arthritis, a quarter (24%) had connective tissue disease, and most others had a vasculitis condition or multiple conditions.

filadendron/E+/Getty Images

A total of 11% of patients were unvaccinated, 28% were partially vaccinated with one mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose, and 41% were fully vaccinated with two mRNA vaccine doses or one Johnson & Johnson dose. The 116 fully vaccinated patients were considered to have a breakthrough infection while the other 164 were considered to have a nonbreakthrough infection. The breakthrough and nonbreakthrough groups were similar in terms of age, sex, race, ethnicity, smoking status, and type of rheumatic disease. Comorbidities were also similar, except obesity, which was more common in the non–breakthrough infection group (25%) than the breakthrough infection group (10%).

The researchers queried patients on their COVID-19 symptoms, how long symptoms lasted, treatments they received, and hospitalization details. COVID-19 symptoms assessed included fever, sore throat, new cough, nasal congestion/rhinorrhea, dyspnea, chest pain, rash, myalgia, fatigue/malaise, headache, nausea/vomiting, diarrhea, anosmia, dysgeusia, and joint pain.

Patients completed surveys about symptoms at 4 weeks and 3 months after infection. Long COVID, or PASC, was defined as any persistent symptom at the times assessed.
 

Vaccinated patients fared better across outcomes

At 4 weeks after infection, 41% of fully vaccinated patients had at least one persistent symptom, compared with 54% of unvaccinated or partially vaccinated patients (P = .04). At 3 months after infection, 21% of fully vaccinated patients had at least one persistent symptom, compared with 41% of unvaccinated or partially vaccinated patients (P < .0001).

Vaccinated patients were half as likely to have long COVID at 4 weeks after infection (adjusted odds ratio, 0.49) and 90% less likely to have long COVID 3 months after infection (aOR, 0.1), after adjustment for age, sex, race, comorbidities, and use of any of four immune-suppressing medications (anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies, methotrexate, mycophenolate, or glucocorticoids).

Fully vaccinated patients with breakthrough infections had an average 21 additional days without symptoms during follow-up, compared with unvaccinated and partially vaccinated patients (P = .04).

Reduced risk of long COVID did not change for vaccinated patients after sensitivity analyses for those who did not receive nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid) or monoclonal antibodies, those who didn’t receive any COVID-19-related treatment, those who completed their questionnaires within 6 months after infection, and those who were not hospitalized.

“One important message is that among those who did get PASC, the severity appears similar among those with and without a breakthrough infection,” Dr. Wallace said. “This highlights the need for ongoing research to improve recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of PASC.”

Many more breakthrough infections (72%) than nonbreakthrough infections (2%) occurred during Omicron. The authors acknowledged that different variants might play a role in different long COVID risks but said such potential confounding is unlikely to fully explain the results.

“Even with data suggesting that the Omicron variants may be intrinsically less severe, vaccination still has an impact on severity of infection, rates of hospitalization, and other outcomes and thus may play a role in the risk of PASC,” lead author Naomi Patel, MD, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a rheumatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in an interview. “A study evaluating the proportions with PASC by vaccination status during the time in which a single variant is predominant, such as the early Omicron era, could help to better assess the more isolated impact of vaccination on PASC.”

Dr. Calabrese said he is convinced that Omicron infections are less likely to result in more severe forms of acute COVID than pre-Omicron infections, and he suspects Omicron infections are also less likely to result in long COVID, although less evidence currently supports this hypothesis.

Hospitalization was more common in unvaccinated/partly vaccinated patients than in vaccinated patients (27% vs. 5%; P = .001). Although pain and fatigue were lower in those with breakthrough infections, functional scores and health-related quality of life were similar in both groups.

Some symptoms significantly differed between vaccinated and unvaccinated/partly vaccinated groups, possibly caused partly by different variants. Nasal congestion was more common (73%) in those with breakthrough infections than in those with nonbreakthrough infections (46%; P < .0001). Those who were unvaccinated/partly vaccinated were significantly more likely to have loss of smell (46% vs. 22%) or taste (45% vs. 28%) or to have joint pain (11% vs. 4%).

Treatment with nirmatrelvir/ritonavir was also more common in vaccinated patients (12%) than in unvaccinated/partly vaccinated patients (1%; P < .0001), as was treatment with monoclonal antibodies (34% vs. 8%; P < .0001).

The study was limited by its low diversity and being at a single health care system, the authors said. Study coauthor Jeffrey A. Sparks, MD, MMSc, an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said in an interview that the group is planning additional studies as their cohort grows, including “investigating the relationships between COVID-19 and specific rheumatic diseases and immunomodulating medications, expansion of autoimmunity and systemic inflammation, and lung damage among specific patient populations.”

Dr. Calabrese said it will be important for follow-up study of the symptomatic patients to “determine how many of these patients will fit the clinical picture of long COVID or long-haul phenotypes over the months and years ahead, including documenting exertional malaise and quality of life.

This study only assessed patients who received zero, one, or two doses of a vaccine, but many patients with rheumatic disease today will likely have received booster doses. However, Dr. Calabrese said it would be difficult to quantify whether a third, fourth, or fifth dose offers additional protection from long-term COVID complications after full vaccination or hybrid vaccination.

The research was funded by the Rheumatology Research Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the R. Bruce and Joan M. Mickey Research Scholar Fund, and the Llura Gund Award for Rheumatoid Arthritis Research and Care. Dr. Wallace has received research support from Bristol-Myers Squibb and Principia/Sanofi and consulting fees from Zenas BioPharma, Horizon, Sanofi, Shionogi, Viela Bio, and Medpace. Dr. Sparks has received research support from Bristol-Myers Squibb and consulting fees from AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead, Inova Diagnostics, Janssen, Optum, and Pfizer. Dr. Patel has received consulting fees from FVC Health. Calabrese has consulted for Genentech, Sanofi-Regeneron, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Patients with rheumatic disease are at least half as likely to develop long COVID after a SARS-CoV-2 infection if they have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to research published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (2022 Nov 28. doi: 10.1136/ard-2022-223439).

“Moreover, those who were vaccinated prior to getting COVID-19 had less pain and fatigue after their infection,” Zachary S. Wallace, MD, MSc, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and a study author, said in an interview. “These findings reinforce the importance of vaccination in this population.”

Messaging around the value of COVID vaccination has been confusing for some with rheumatic disease “because our concern regarding a blunted response to vaccination has led many patients to think that they do not provide much benefit if they are on immunosuppression,” Dr. Wallace said. “In our cohort, which included many patients on immunosuppression of varying degrees, being vaccinated was quite beneficial.”

Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, director of the R.J. Fasenmyer Center for Clinical Immunology and a professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, said in an interview that the study is an “extremely important contribution to our understanding of COVID-19 and its pattern of recovery in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases [IMIDs].” Remaining unanswered questions are “whether patients with IMIDs develop more frequent PASC [post–acute sequelae of COVID-19] from COVID-19 and, if so, is it milder or more severe, and does it differ in its clinical phenotype?”
 

Long COVID risk assessed at 4 weeks and 3 months after infection

The researchers prospectively tracked 280 adult patients in the Mass General Brigham health care system in the greater Boston area who had systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases and had an acute COVID-19 infection between March 2020 and July 2022. Patients were an average 53 years old, and most were White (82%) and female (80%). More than half (59%) had inflammatory arthritis, a quarter (24%) had connective tissue disease, and most others had a vasculitis condition or multiple conditions.

filadendron/E+/Getty Images

A total of 11% of patients were unvaccinated, 28% were partially vaccinated with one mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose, and 41% were fully vaccinated with two mRNA vaccine doses or one Johnson & Johnson dose. The 116 fully vaccinated patients were considered to have a breakthrough infection while the other 164 were considered to have a nonbreakthrough infection. The breakthrough and nonbreakthrough groups were similar in terms of age, sex, race, ethnicity, smoking status, and type of rheumatic disease. Comorbidities were also similar, except obesity, which was more common in the non–breakthrough infection group (25%) than the breakthrough infection group (10%).

The researchers queried patients on their COVID-19 symptoms, how long symptoms lasted, treatments they received, and hospitalization details. COVID-19 symptoms assessed included fever, sore throat, new cough, nasal congestion/rhinorrhea, dyspnea, chest pain, rash, myalgia, fatigue/malaise, headache, nausea/vomiting, diarrhea, anosmia, dysgeusia, and joint pain.

Patients completed surveys about symptoms at 4 weeks and 3 months after infection. Long COVID, or PASC, was defined as any persistent symptom at the times assessed.
 

Vaccinated patients fared better across outcomes

At 4 weeks after infection, 41% of fully vaccinated patients had at least one persistent symptom, compared with 54% of unvaccinated or partially vaccinated patients (P = .04). At 3 months after infection, 21% of fully vaccinated patients had at least one persistent symptom, compared with 41% of unvaccinated or partially vaccinated patients (P < .0001).

Vaccinated patients were half as likely to have long COVID at 4 weeks after infection (adjusted odds ratio, 0.49) and 90% less likely to have long COVID 3 months after infection (aOR, 0.1), after adjustment for age, sex, race, comorbidities, and use of any of four immune-suppressing medications (anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies, methotrexate, mycophenolate, or glucocorticoids).

Fully vaccinated patients with breakthrough infections had an average 21 additional days without symptoms during follow-up, compared with unvaccinated and partially vaccinated patients (P = .04).

Reduced risk of long COVID did not change for vaccinated patients after sensitivity analyses for those who did not receive nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid) or monoclonal antibodies, those who didn’t receive any COVID-19-related treatment, those who completed their questionnaires within 6 months after infection, and those who were not hospitalized.

“One important message is that among those who did get PASC, the severity appears similar among those with and without a breakthrough infection,” Dr. Wallace said. “This highlights the need for ongoing research to improve recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of PASC.”

Many more breakthrough infections (72%) than nonbreakthrough infections (2%) occurred during Omicron. The authors acknowledged that different variants might play a role in different long COVID risks but said such potential confounding is unlikely to fully explain the results.

“Even with data suggesting that the Omicron variants may be intrinsically less severe, vaccination still has an impact on severity of infection, rates of hospitalization, and other outcomes and thus may play a role in the risk of PASC,” lead author Naomi Patel, MD, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a rheumatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in an interview. “A study evaluating the proportions with PASC by vaccination status during the time in which a single variant is predominant, such as the early Omicron era, could help to better assess the more isolated impact of vaccination on PASC.”

Dr. Calabrese said he is convinced that Omicron infections are less likely to result in more severe forms of acute COVID than pre-Omicron infections, and he suspects Omicron infections are also less likely to result in long COVID, although less evidence currently supports this hypothesis.

Hospitalization was more common in unvaccinated/partly vaccinated patients than in vaccinated patients (27% vs. 5%; P = .001). Although pain and fatigue were lower in those with breakthrough infections, functional scores and health-related quality of life were similar in both groups.

Some symptoms significantly differed between vaccinated and unvaccinated/partly vaccinated groups, possibly caused partly by different variants. Nasal congestion was more common (73%) in those with breakthrough infections than in those with nonbreakthrough infections (46%; P < .0001). Those who were unvaccinated/partly vaccinated were significantly more likely to have loss of smell (46% vs. 22%) or taste (45% vs. 28%) or to have joint pain (11% vs. 4%).

Treatment with nirmatrelvir/ritonavir was also more common in vaccinated patients (12%) than in unvaccinated/partly vaccinated patients (1%; P < .0001), as was treatment with monoclonal antibodies (34% vs. 8%; P < .0001).

The study was limited by its low diversity and being at a single health care system, the authors said. Study coauthor Jeffrey A. Sparks, MD, MMSc, an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said in an interview that the group is planning additional studies as their cohort grows, including “investigating the relationships between COVID-19 and specific rheumatic diseases and immunomodulating medications, expansion of autoimmunity and systemic inflammation, and lung damage among specific patient populations.”

Dr. Calabrese said it will be important for follow-up study of the symptomatic patients to “determine how many of these patients will fit the clinical picture of long COVID or long-haul phenotypes over the months and years ahead, including documenting exertional malaise and quality of life.

This study only assessed patients who received zero, one, or two doses of a vaccine, but many patients with rheumatic disease today will likely have received booster doses. However, Dr. Calabrese said it would be difficult to quantify whether a third, fourth, or fifth dose offers additional protection from long-term COVID complications after full vaccination or hybrid vaccination.

The research was funded by the Rheumatology Research Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the R. Bruce and Joan M. Mickey Research Scholar Fund, and the Llura Gund Award for Rheumatoid Arthritis Research and Care. Dr. Wallace has received research support from Bristol-Myers Squibb and Principia/Sanofi and consulting fees from Zenas BioPharma, Horizon, Sanofi, Shionogi, Viela Bio, and Medpace. Dr. Sparks has received research support from Bristol-Myers Squibb and consulting fees from AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead, Inova Diagnostics, Janssen, Optum, and Pfizer. Dr. Patel has received consulting fees from FVC Health. Calabrese has consulted for Genentech, Sanofi-Regeneron, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Patients with rheumatic disease are at least half as likely to develop long COVID after a SARS-CoV-2 infection if they have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to research published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (2022 Nov 28. doi: 10.1136/ard-2022-223439).

“Moreover, those who were vaccinated prior to getting COVID-19 had less pain and fatigue after their infection,” Zachary S. Wallace, MD, MSc, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, and a study author, said in an interview. “These findings reinforce the importance of vaccination in this population.”

Messaging around the value of COVID vaccination has been confusing for some with rheumatic disease “because our concern regarding a blunted response to vaccination has led many patients to think that they do not provide much benefit if they are on immunosuppression,” Dr. Wallace said. “In our cohort, which included many patients on immunosuppression of varying degrees, being vaccinated was quite beneficial.”

Leonard H. Calabrese, DO, director of the R.J. Fasenmyer Center for Clinical Immunology and a professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, said in an interview that the study is an “extremely important contribution to our understanding of COVID-19 and its pattern of recovery in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases [IMIDs].” Remaining unanswered questions are “whether patients with IMIDs develop more frequent PASC [post–acute sequelae of COVID-19] from COVID-19 and, if so, is it milder or more severe, and does it differ in its clinical phenotype?”
 

Long COVID risk assessed at 4 weeks and 3 months after infection

The researchers prospectively tracked 280 adult patients in the Mass General Brigham health care system in the greater Boston area who had systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases and had an acute COVID-19 infection between March 2020 and July 2022. Patients were an average 53 years old, and most were White (82%) and female (80%). More than half (59%) had inflammatory arthritis, a quarter (24%) had connective tissue disease, and most others had a vasculitis condition or multiple conditions.

filadendron/E+/Getty Images

A total of 11% of patients were unvaccinated, 28% were partially vaccinated with one mRNA COVID-19 vaccine dose, and 41% were fully vaccinated with two mRNA vaccine doses or one Johnson & Johnson dose. The 116 fully vaccinated patients were considered to have a breakthrough infection while the other 164 were considered to have a nonbreakthrough infection. The breakthrough and nonbreakthrough groups were similar in terms of age, sex, race, ethnicity, smoking status, and type of rheumatic disease. Comorbidities were also similar, except obesity, which was more common in the non–breakthrough infection group (25%) than the breakthrough infection group (10%).

The researchers queried patients on their COVID-19 symptoms, how long symptoms lasted, treatments they received, and hospitalization details. COVID-19 symptoms assessed included fever, sore throat, new cough, nasal congestion/rhinorrhea, dyspnea, chest pain, rash, myalgia, fatigue/malaise, headache, nausea/vomiting, diarrhea, anosmia, dysgeusia, and joint pain.

Patients completed surveys about symptoms at 4 weeks and 3 months after infection. Long COVID, or PASC, was defined as any persistent symptom at the times assessed.
 

Vaccinated patients fared better across outcomes

At 4 weeks after infection, 41% of fully vaccinated patients had at least one persistent symptom, compared with 54% of unvaccinated or partially vaccinated patients (P = .04). At 3 months after infection, 21% of fully vaccinated patients had at least one persistent symptom, compared with 41% of unvaccinated or partially vaccinated patients (P < .0001).

Vaccinated patients were half as likely to have long COVID at 4 weeks after infection (adjusted odds ratio, 0.49) and 90% less likely to have long COVID 3 months after infection (aOR, 0.1), after adjustment for age, sex, race, comorbidities, and use of any of four immune-suppressing medications (anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies, methotrexate, mycophenolate, or glucocorticoids).

Fully vaccinated patients with breakthrough infections had an average 21 additional days without symptoms during follow-up, compared with unvaccinated and partially vaccinated patients (P = .04).

Reduced risk of long COVID did not change for vaccinated patients after sensitivity analyses for those who did not receive nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid) or monoclonal antibodies, those who didn’t receive any COVID-19-related treatment, those who completed their questionnaires within 6 months after infection, and those who were not hospitalized.

“One important message is that among those who did get PASC, the severity appears similar among those with and without a breakthrough infection,” Dr. Wallace said. “This highlights the need for ongoing research to improve recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of PASC.”

Many more breakthrough infections (72%) than nonbreakthrough infections (2%) occurred during Omicron. The authors acknowledged that different variants might play a role in different long COVID risks but said such potential confounding is unlikely to fully explain the results.

“Even with data suggesting that the Omicron variants may be intrinsically less severe, vaccination still has an impact on severity of infection, rates of hospitalization, and other outcomes and thus may play a role in the risk of PASC,” lead author Naomi Patel, MD, an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a rheumatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said in an interview. “A study evaluating the proportions with PASC by vaccination status during the time in which a single variant is predominant, such as the early Omicron era, could help to better assess the more isolated impact of vaccination on PASC.”

Dr. Calabrese said he is convinced that Omicron infections are less likely to result in more severe forms of acute COVID than pre-Omicron infections, and he suspects Omicron infections are also less likely to result in long COVID, although less evidence currently supports this hypothesis.

Hospitalization was more common in unvaccinated/partly vaccinated patients than in vaccinated patients (27% vs. 5%; P = .001). Although pain and fatigue were lower in those with breakthrough infections, functional scores and health-related quality of life were similar in both groups.

Some symptoms significantly differed between vaccinated and unvaccinated/partly vaccinated groups, possibly caused partly by different variants. Nasal congestion was more common (73%) in those with breakthrough infections than in those with nonbreakthrough infections (46%; P < .0001). Those who were unvaccinated/partly vaccinated were significantly more likely to have loss of smell (46% vs. 22%) or taste (45% vs. 28%) or to have joint pain (11% vs. 4%).

Treatment with nirmatrelvir/ritonavir was also more common in vaccinated patients (12%) than in unvaccinated/partly vaccinated patients (1%; P < .0001), as was treatment with monoclonal antibodies (34% vs. 8%; P < .0001).

The study was limited by its low diversity and being at a single health care system, the authors said. Study coauthor Jeffrey A. Sparks, MD, MMSc, an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said in an interview that the group is planning additional studies as their cohort grows, including “investigating the relationships between COVID-19 and specific rheumatic diseases and immunomodulating medications, expansion of autoimmunity and systemic inflammation, and lung damage among specific patient populations.”

Dr. Calabrese said it will be important for follow-up study of the symptomatic patients to “determine how many of these patients will fit the clinical picture of long COVID or long-haul phenotypes over the months and years ahead, including documenting exertional malaise and quality of life.

This study only assessed patients who received zero, one, or two doses of a vaccine, but many patients with rheumatic disease today will likely have received booster doses. However, Dr. Calabrese said it would be difficult to quantify whether a third, fourth, or fifth dose offers additional protection from long-term COVID complications after full vaccination or hybrid vaccination.

The research was funded by the Rheumatology Research Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the R. Bruce and Joan M. Mickey Research Scholar Fund, and the Llura Gund Award for Rheumatoid Arthritis Research and Care. Dr. Wallace has received research support from Bristol-Myers Squibb and Principia/Sanofi and consulting fees from Zenas BioPharma, Horizon, Sanofi, Shionogi, Viela Bio, and Medpace. Dr. Sparks has received research support from Bristol-Myers Squibb and consulting fees from AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead, Inova Diagnostics, Janssen, Optum, and Pfizer. Dr. Patel has received consulting fees from FVC Health. Calabrese has consulted for Genentech, Sanofi-Regeneron, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Anna Sutton was shocked when she received a letter from her husband’s job-based health plan stating that Humira, an expensive drug used to treat her daughter’s juvenile arthritis, was now on a long list of medications considered “nonessential benefits.”

The July 2021 letter said the family could either participate in a new effort overseen by a company called SaveOnSP and get the drug free of charge or be saddled with a monthly copayment that could top $1,000.

“It really gave us no choice,” said Mrs. Sutton, of Woodinville, Wash. She added that “every single [Food and Drug Administration]–approved medication for juvenile arthritis” was on the list of nonessential benefits.

Mrs. Sutton had unwittingly become part of a strategy that employers are using to deal with the high cost of drugs prescribed to treat conditions such as arthritis, psoriasis, cancer, and hemophilia.

Those employers are tapping into dollars provided through programs they have previously criticized: patient financial assistance initiatives set up by drugmakers, which some benefit managers have complained encourage patients to stay on expensive brand-name drugs when less expensive options might be available.

Now, though, employers, or the vendors and insurers they hire specifically to oversee such efforts, are seeking that money to offset their own costs. Drugmakers object, saying the money was intended primarily for patients. But some benefit brokers and companies like SaveOnSP say they can help trim employers’ spending on insurance – which, they say, could be the difference between an employer offering coverage to workers or not.

It’s the latest twist in a long-running dispute between the drug industry and insurers over which group is more to blame for rising costs to patients. And patients are, again, caught in the middle.

Patient advocates say the term “nonessential” stresses patients out even though it doesn’t mean the drugs – often called “specialty” drugs because of their high prices or the way they are made – are unnecessary.

Some advocates fear the new strategies could be “a way to weed out those with costly health care needs,” said Rachel Klein, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group. Workers who rely on the drugs may feel pressured to change insurers or jobs.

Two versions of the new strategy are in play. Both are used mainly by self-insured employers that hire vendors, like SaveOnSP, which then work with the employers’ pharmacy benefit managers, such as Express Scripts/Cigna, to implement the strategy. There are also smaller vendors, like SHARx and Payer Matrix, some of which work directly with employers.

In one approach, insurers or employers continue to cover the drugs but designate them as “nonessential,” which allows the health plans to bypass annual limits set by the Affordable Care Act on how much patients can pay in out-of-pocket costs for drugs. The employer or hired vendor then raises the copay required of the worker, often sharply, but offers to substantially cut or eliminate that copay if the patient participates in the new effort. Workers who agree enroll in drugmaker financial assistance programs meant to cover the drug copays, and the vendor monitoring the effort aims to capture the maximum amount the drugmaker provides annually, according to a lawsuit filed in May by drugmaker Johnson & Johnson against SaveOnSP, which is based in Elma, N.Y.

The employer must still cover part of the cost of the drug, but the amount is reduced by the amount of copay assistance that is accessed. That assistance can vary widely and be as much as $20,000 a year for some drugs.

In the other approach, employers don’t bother naming drugs nonessential; they simply drop coverage for specific drugs or classes of drugs. Then, the outside vendor helps patients provide the financial and other information needed to apply for free medication from drugmakers through charity programs intended for uninsured patients.

“We’re seeing it in every state at this point,” said Becky Burns, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at the Bleeding and Clotting Disorders Institute in Peoria, Ill., a federally funded hemophilia treatment center.

The strategies are mostly being used in self-insured employer health plans, which are governed by federal laws that give broad flexibility to employers in designing health benefits.

Still, some patient advocates say these programs can lead to delays for patients in accessing medications while applications are processed – and sometimes unexpected bills for consumers.

“We have patients get billed after they max out their assistance,” said Kollet Koulianos, vice president of payer relations at the National Hemophilia Foundation. Once she gets involved, vendors often claim the bills were sent in error.

Even though only about 2% of the workforce needs the drugs, which can cost thousands of dollars a dose, they can lead to a hefty financial liability for self-insured employers, said Drew Mann, a benefits consultant in Knoxville, Tenn., whose clientele includes employers that use variations of these programs.

Before employer health plans took advantage of such assistance, patients often signed up for these programs on their own, receiving coupons that covered their share of the drug’s cost. In that circumstance, drugmakers often paid less than they do under the new employer schemes because a patient’s out-of-pocket costs were capped at lower amounts.

Brokers and the CEOs of firms offering the new programs say that in most cases patients continue to get their drugs, often with little or no out-of-pocket costs.

If workers do not qualify for charity because their income is too high, or for another reason, the employer might make an exception and pay the claim or look for an alternative solution, Mr. Mann said. Patient groups noted that some specialty drugs may not have any alternatives.

How this practice will play out in the long run remains uncertain. Drugmakers offer both copay assistance and charity care in part because they know many patients, even those with insurance, cannot afford their products. The programs are also good public relations and a tax write-off. But the new emphasis by some employers on maximizing the amount they or their insurers can collect from the programs could cause some drugmakers to take issue with the new strategies or even reconsider their programs.

“Even though our client, like most manufacturers, provides billions in discounts and rebates to health insurers as part of their negotiations, the insurers also want this additional pool of funds, which is meant to help people who can’t meet the copay,” said Harry Sandick, a lawyer representing J&J.

J&J’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, alleges that patients are “coerced” into participating in copay assistance programs after their drugs are deemed “nonessential” and therefore are “no longer subject to the ACA’s annual out-of-pocket maximum.”

Once patients enroll, the money from the drugmaker goes to the insurer or employer plan, with SaveOnSP retaining 25%, according to the lawsuit. It claims J&J has lost $100 million to these efforts.

None of that money counts toward patients’ deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums for the year.

In addition to the lawsuit over the copay assistance program efforts, there has been other reaction to the new employer strategies. In an October letter to physicians, the Johnson & Johnson Patient Assistance Foundation, a separate entity, said it will no longer offer free medications to patients with insurance starting in January, citing the rise of such “alternative funding programs.”

Still, J&J spokesperson L.D. Platt said the drugmaker has plans, also in January, to roll out other assistance to patients who may be “underinsured” so they won’t be affected by the foundation’s decision.

In a statement, SaveOnSP said that employers object to drug companies’ “using their employees’ ongoing need for these drugs as an excuse to keep hiking the drugs’ prices” and that the firm simply “advises these employers on how to fight back against rising prices while getting employees the drugs they need at no cost to the employees.”

In a court filing, SaveOnSP said drugmakers have another option if they don’t like efforts by insurers and employers to max out what they can get from the programs: reduce the amount of assistance available. J&J, the filing said, did just that when it recently cut its allotted amount of copay assistance for psoriasis drugs Stelara and Tremfya from $20,000 to $6,000 per participant annually. The filing noted that SaveOnSP participants would still have no copay for those drugs.

For Mrs. Sutton’s part, her family did participate in the program offered through her husband’s work-based insurance plan, agreeing to have SaveOnSP monitor their enrollment and payments from the drugmaker.

So far, her 15-year-old daughter has continued to get Humira, and she has not been billed a copay.

Even so, “the whole process seems kind of slimy to me,” she said. “The patients are caught in the middle between the drug industry and the insurance industry, each trying to get as much money as possible out of the other.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Anna Sutton was shocked when she received a letter from her husband’s job-based health plan stating that Humira, an expensive drug used to treat her daughter’s juvenile arthritis, was now on a long list of medications considered “nonessential benefits.”

The July 2021 letter said the family could either participate in a new effort overseen by a company called SaveOnSP and get the drug free of charge or be saddled with a monthly copayment that could top $1,000.

“It really gave us no choice,” said Mrs. Sutton, of Woodinville, Wash. She added that “every single [Food and Drug Administration]–approved medication for juvenile arthritis” was on the list of nonessential benefits.

Mrs. Sutton had unwittingly become part of a strategy that employers are using to deal with the high cost of drugs prescribed to treat conditions such as arthritis, psoriasis, cancer, and hemophilia.

Those employers are tapping into dollars provided through programs they have previously criticized: patient financial assistance initiatives set up by drugmakers, which some benefit managers have complained encourage patients to stay on expensive brand-name drugs when less expensive options might be available.

Now, though, employers, or the vendors and insurers they hire specifically to oversee such efforts, are seeking that money to offset their own costs. Drugmakers object, saying the money was intended primarily for patients. But some benefit brokers and companies like SaveOnSP say they can help trim employers’ spending on insurance – which, they say, could be the difference between an employer offering coverage to workers or not.

It’s the latest twist in a long-running dispute between the drug industry and insurers over which group is more to blame for rising costs to patients. And patients are, again, caught in the middle.

Patient advocates say the term “nonessential” stresses patients out even though it doesn’t mean the drugs – often called “specialty” drugs because of their high prices or the way they are made – are unnecessary.

Some advocates fear the new strategies could be “a way to weed out those with costly health care needs,” said Rachel Klein, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group. Workers who rely on the drugs may feel pressured to change insurers or jobs.

Two versions of the new strategy are in play. Both are used mainly by self-insured employers that hire vendors, like SaveOnSP, which then work with the employers’ pharmacy benefit managers, such as Express Scripts/Cigna, to implement the strategy. There are also smaller vendors, like SHARx and Payer Matrix, some of which work directly with employers.

In one approach, insurers or employers continue to cover the drugs but designate them as “nonessential,” which allows the health plans to bypass annual limits set by the Affordable Care Act on how much patients can pay in out-of-pocket costs for drugs. The employer or hired vendor then raises the copay required of the worker, often sharply, but offers to substantially cut or eliminate that copay if the patient participates in the new effort. Workers who agree enroll in drugmaker financial assistance programs meant to cover the drug copays, and the vendor monitoring the effort aims to capture the maximum amount the drugmaker provides annually, according to a lawsuit filed in May by drugmaker Johnson & Johnson against SaveOnSP, which is based in Elma, N.Y.

The employer must still cover part of the cost of the drug, but the amount is reduced by the amount of copay assistance that is accessed. That assistance can vary widely and be as much as $20,000 a year for some drugs.

In the other approach, employers don’t bother naming drugs nonessential; they simply drop coverage for specific drugs or classes of drugs. Then, the outside vendor helps patients provide the financial and other information needed to apply for free medication from drugmakers through charity programs intended for uninsured patients.

“We’re seeing it in every state at this point,” said Becky Burns, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at the Bleeding and Clotting Disorders Institute in Peoria, Ill., a federally funded hemophilia treatment center.

The strategies are mostly being used in self-insured employer health plans, which are governed by federal laws that give broad flexibility to employers in designing health benefits.

Still, some patient advocates say these programs can lead to delays for patients in accessing medications while applications are processed – and sometimes unexpected bills for consumers.

“We have patients get billed after they max out their assistance,” said Kollet Koulianos, vice president of payer relations at the National Hemophilia Foundation. Once she gets involved, vendors often claim the bills were sent in error.

Even though only about 2% of the workforce needs the drugs, which can cost thousands of dollars a dose, they can lead to a hefty financial liability for self-insured employers, said Drew Mann, a benefits consultant in Knoxville, Tenn., whose clientele includes employers that use variations of these programs.

Before employer health plans took advantage of such assistance, patients often signed up for these programs on their own, receiving coupons that covered their share of the drug’s cost. In that circumstance, drugmakers often paid less than they do under the new employer schemes because a patient’s out-of-pocket costs were capped at lower amounts.

Brokers and the CEOs of firms offering the new programs say that in most cases patients continue to get their drugs, often with little or no out-of-pocket costs.

If workers do not qualify for charity because their income is too high, or for another reason, the employer might make an exception and pay the claim or look for an alternative solution, Mr. Mann said. Patient groups noted that some specialty drugs may not have any alternatives.

How this practice will play out in the long run remains uncertain. Drugmakers offer both copay assistance and charity care in part because they know many patients, even those with insurance, cannot afford their products. The programs are also good public relations and a tax write-off. But the new emphasis by some employers on maximizing the amount they or their insurers can collect from the programs could cause some drugmakers to take issue with the new strategies or even reconsider their programs.

“Even though our client, like most manufacturers, provides billions in discounts and rebates to health insurers as part of their negotiations, the insurers also want this additional pool of funds, which is meant to help people who can’t meet the copay,” said Harry Sandick, a lawyer representing J&J.

J&J’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, alleges that patients are “coerced” into participating in copay assistance programs after their drugs are deemed “nonessential” and therefore are “no longer subject to the ACA’s annual out-of-pocket maximum.”

Once patients enroll, the money from the drugmaker goes to the insurer or employer plan, with SaveOnSP retaining 25%, according to the lawsuit. It claims J&J has lost $100 million to these efforts.

None of that money counts toward patients’ deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums for the year.

In addition to the lawsuit over the copay assistance program efforts, there has been other reaction to the new employer strategies. In an October letter to physicians, the Johnson & Johnson Patient Assistance Foundation, a separate entity, said it will no longer offer free medications to patients with insurance starting in January, citing the rise of such “alternative funding programs.”

Still, J&J spokesperson L.D. Platt said the drugmaker has plans, also in January, to roll out other assistance to patients who may be “underinsured” so they won’t be affected by the foundation’s decision.

In a statement, SaveOnSP said that employers object to drug companies’ “using their employees’ ongoing need for these drugs as an excuse to keep hiking the drugs’ prices” and that the firm simply “advises these employers on how to fight back against rising prices while getting employees the drugs they need at no cost to the employees.”

In a court filing, SaveOnSP said drugmakers have another option if they don’t like efforts by insurers and employers to max out what they can get from the programs: reduce the amount of assistance available. J&J, the filing said, did just that when it recently cut its allotted amount of copay assistance for psoriasis drugs Stelara and Tremfya from $20,000 to $6,000 per participant annually. The filing noted that SaveOnSP participants would still have no copay for those drugs.

For Mrs. Sutton’s part, her family did participate in the program offered through her husband’s work-based insurance plan, agreeing to have SaveOnSP monitor their enrollment and payments from the drugmaker.

So far, her 15-year-old daughter has continued to get Humira, and she has not been billed a copay.

Even so, “the whole process seems kind of slimy to me,” she said. “The patients are caught in the middle between the drug industry and the insurance industry, each trying to get as much money as possible out of the other.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Anna Sutton was shocked when she received a letter from her husband’s job-based health plan stating that Humira, an expensive drug used to treat her daughter’s juvenile arthritis, was now on a long list of medications considered “nonessential benefits.”

The July 2021 letter said the family could either participate in a new effort overseen by a company called SaveOnSP and get the drug free of charge or be saddled with a monthly copayment that could top $1,000.

“It really gave us no choice,” said Mrs. Sutton, of Woodinville, Wash. She added that “every single [Food and Drug Administration]–approved medication for juvenile arthritis” was on the list of nonessential benefits.

Mrs. Sutton had unwittingly become part of a strategy that employers are using to deal with the high cost of drugs prescribed to treat conditions such as arthritis, psoriasis, cancer, and hemophilia.

Those employers are tapping into dollars provided through programs they have previously criticized: patient financial assistance initiatives set up by drugmakers, which some benefit managers have complained encourage patients to stay on expensive brand-name drugs when less expensive options might be available.

Now, though, employers, or the vendors and insurers they hire specifically to oversee such efforts, are seeking that money to offset their own costs. Drugmakers object, saying the money was intended primarily for patients. But some benefit brokers and companies like SaveOnSP say they can help trim employers’ spending on insurance – which, they say, could be the difference between an employer offering coverage to workers or not.

It’s the latest twist in a long-running dispute between the drug industry and insurers over which group is more to blame for rising costs to patients. And patients are, again, caught in the middle.

Patient advocates say the term “nonessential” stresses patients out even though it doesn’t mean the drugs – often called “specialty” drugs because of their high prices or the way they are made – are unnecessary.

Some advocates fear the new strategies could be “a way to weed out those with costly health care needs,” said Rachel Klein, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group. Workers who rely on the drugs may feel pressured to change insurers or jobs.

Two versions of the new strategy are in play. Both are used mainly by self-insured employers that hire vendors, like SaveOnSP, which then work with the employers’ pharmacy benefit managers, such as Express Scripts/Cigna, to implement the strategy. There are also smaller vendors, like SHARx and Payer Matrix, some of which work directly with employers.

In one approach, insurers or employers continue to cover the drugs but designate them as “nonessential,” which allows the health plans to bypass annual limits set by the Affordable Care Act on how much patients can pay in out-of-pocket costs for drugs. The employer or hired vendor then raises the copay required of the worker, often sharply, but offers to substantially cut or eliminate that copay if the patient participates in the new effort. Workers who agree enroll in drugmaker financial assistance programs meant to cover the drug copays, and the vendor monitoring the effort aims to capture the maximum amount the drugmaker provides annually, according to a lawsuit filed in May by drugmaker Johnson & Johnson against SaveOnSP, which is based in Elma, N.Y.

The employer must still cover part of the cost of the drug, but the amount is reduced by the amount of copay assistance that is accessed. That assistance can vary widely and be as much as $20,000 a year for some drugs.

In the other approach, employers don’t bother naming drugs nonessential; they simply drop coverage for specific drugs or classes of drugs. Then, the outside vendor helps patients provide the financial and other information needed to apply for free medication from drugmakers through charity programs intended for uninsured patients.

“We’re seeing it in every state at this point,” said Becky Burns, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at the Bleeding and Clotting Disorders Institute in Peoria, Ill., a federally funded hemophilia treatment center.

The strategies are mostly being used in self-insured employer health plans, which are governed by federal laws that give broad flexibility to employers in designing health benefits.

Still, some patient advocates say these programs can lead to delays for patients in accessing medications while applications are processed – and sometimes unexpected bills for consumers.

“We have patients get billed after they max out their assistance,” said Kollet Koulianos, vice president of payer relations at the National Hemophilia Foundation. Once she gets involved, vendors often claim the bills were sent in error.

Even though only about 2% of the workforce needs the drugs, which can cost thousands of dollars a dose, they can lead to a hefty financial liability for self-insured employers, said Drew Mann, a benefits consultant in Knoxville, Tenn., whose clientele includes employers that use variations of these programs.

Before employer health plans took advantage of such assistance, patients often signed up for these programs on their own, receiving coupons that covered their share of the drug’s cost. In that circumstance, drugmakers often paid less than they do under the new employer schemes because a patient’s out-of-pocket costs were capped at lower amounts.

Brokers and the CEOs of firms offering the new programs say that in most cases patients continue to get their drugs, often with little or no out-of-pocket costs.

If workers do not qualify for charity because their income is too high, or for another reason, the employer might make an exception and pay the claim or look for an alternative solution, Mr. Mann said. Patient groups noted that some specialty drugs may not have any alternatives.

How this practice will play out in the long run remains uncertain. Drugmakers offer both copay assistance and charity care in part because they know many patients, even those with insurance, cannot afford their products. The programs are also good public relations and a tax write-off. But the new emphasis by some employers on maximizing the amount they or their insurers can collect from the programs could cause some drugmakers to take issue with the new strategies or even reconsider their programs.

“Even though our client, like most manufacturers, provides billions in discounts and rebates to health insurers as part of their negotiations, the insurers also want this additional pool of funds, which is meant to help people who can’t meet the copay,” said Harry Sandick, a lawyer representing J&J.

J&J’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, alleges that patients are “coerced” into participating in copay assistance programs after their drugs are deemed “nonessential” and therefore are “no longer subject to the ACA’s annual out-of-pocket maximum.”

Once patients enroll, the money from the drugmaker goes to the insurer or employer plan, with SaveOnSP retaining 25%, according to the lawsuit. It claims J&J has lost $100 million to these efforts.

None of that money counts toward patients’ deductibles or out-of-pocket maximums for the year.

In addition to the lawsuit over the copay assistance program efforts, there has been other reaction to the new employer strategies. In an October letter to physicians, the Johnson & Johnson Patient Assistance Foundation, a separate entity, said it will no longer offer free medications to patients with insurance starting in January, citing the rise of such “alternative funding programs.”

Still, J&J spokesperson L.D. Platt said the drugmaker has plans, also in January, to roll out other assistance to patients who may be “underinsured” so they won’t be affected by the foundation’s decision.

In a statement, SaveOnSP said that employers object to drug companies’ “using their employees’ ongoing need for these drugs as an excuse to keep hiking the drugs’ prices” and that the firm simply “advises these employers on how to fight back against rising prices while getting employees the drugs they need at no cost to the employees.”

In a court filing, SaveOnSP said drugmakers have another option if they don’t like efforts by insurers and employers to max out what they can get from the programs: reduce the amount of assistance available. J&J, the filing said, did just that when it recently cut its allotted amount of copay assistance for psoriasis drugs Stelara and Tremfya from $20,000 to $6,000 per participant annually. The filing noted that SaveOnSP participants would still have no copay for those drugs.

For Mrs. Sutton’s part, her family did participate in the program offered through her husband’s work-based insurance plan, agreeing to have SaveOnSP monitor their enrollment and payments from the drugmaker.

So far, her 15-year-old daughter has continued to get Humira, and she has not been billed a copay.

Even so, “the whole process seems kind of slimy to me,” she said. “The patients are caught in the middle between the drug industry and the insurance industry, each trying to get as much money as possible out of the other.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

For patients with severe arthritis, joint replacement is considered when more conservative treatments have failed. Because patients with obesity have a higher risk of complications during and after surgery, some surgeons, hospitals, and insurance companies have adopted body mass index cutoffs as a basis for deciding whether to offer patients these elective surgeries. But some experts argue that these cutoffs are arbitrary, exclude patients who can still benefit from the surgery, and can increase disparities in care.

“By enforcing cutoffs in general, you’re losing the ability for each surgeon to determine who they want to operate on,” said Daniel Wiznia, MD, assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. He is on the leadership committee of the Movement Is Life Caucus, a nonprofit group focused on eliminating disparities in musculoskeletal health. “For every surgeon, it’s up to them to decide if they feel comfortable doing the surgery,” he noted in an interview. “My guidance for that would be, don’t just say no because of the number – look at the patient’s entire medical profile.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 42% of adults in the United States have a BMI over 30, and 9.2% of adults have a BMI over 40. This excess weight puts additional stress on joints: When a person is walking, experts estimate that the force on the knees can be two to three times someone’s body weight. Over time, this pressure can wear down the cartilage on joints.

As a result, people who are overweight or obese are more likely to develop osteoarthritis and to need joint replacements. According to a Canadian study, patients with a BMI of 30-35 are 3.4 times as likely to require a hip replacement and are 8.5 times as likely to require a knee replacement compared to individuals with a BMI in the “healthy weight” range. With a BMI above 40, individuals were 8.5 times more likely to need a hip replacement and were 32.7 times as likely to need a knee replacement.
 

More complications, greater expense

While there are no universally recommended BMI cutoffs for joint replacement surgery, it is not uncommon for institutions to require that patients have a BMI below a certain value (usually 35-40) to proceed with surgery. A 2013 survey of physicians from the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons found that 52% of surgeons required a BMI below 40 to qualify for surgery.

One of the main reasons for these cutoffs is the elevated risk of complications during and after surgery. Research suggests that obesity is associated with higher rates of wound dehiscence, prosthetic joint infection (PJI), and revision total joint arthroplasty. One 2016 study suggests that patients with a BMI of 35-39.9 are twice as likely to experience PJI compared to patients with a BMI below 35. For patients with a BMI of 40 or higher, PJI is four times as likely.

Another study found that patients whose BMI is 35-40 and who undergo total joint arthroplasty have a 6.4-fold greater risk of deep incision infection. For those with a BMI over 40, that rises to a 12.9-fold increased risk compared to patients with a BMI of 18.5-25. Patients with obesity tend to have other comorbidities that can increase the risk of complications during surgery, such as type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and chronic kidney disease.

Because of the increased risk of complications, health care costs tend to be higher for patients with obesity. The growing popularity of bundled health payments can discourage operating on patients who are more likely to experience complications, such as patients with high BMIs, noted Dr. Wiznia.

Research suggests that minorities and people with lower socioeconomic status are disproportionately affected by these cutoffs. According to the CDC, among non-Hispanic Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, rates of obesity are higher than among their White counterparts, and these patients are less likely to undergo joint replacement. Strictly enforcing this eligibility criterion can worsen those disparities. A study involving 21,294 adults over age 50 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that requiring a BMI of under 35 for total joint arthroplasty resulted in Black patients being 39% less likely to be eligible for surgery than White patients. And individuals with an annual household income under $45,000 were 19% less likely to qualify for surgery than those with a household income above $45,000.
 

BMI no better than other risk factors

Although high BMI is independently associated with a higher risk of complications, the increased risk of complications conferred by a BMI at or above 40 is similar to or lower than those of other comorbidities that surgeons generally accept, said Nicholas Giori, MD, PhD, professor of orthopedic surgery at Stanford (Calif.) University, and chief of orthopedic surgery at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. These other comorbidities include age older than 75, hypertension that requires medication, and insulin-controlled diabetes. “The independent risk of just having the diagnosis of insulin-dependent diabetes is actually comparable to the independent risk of having obesity by itself,” he told this news organization, “and all of us operate on [patients with] diabetes.”

Also, there is no BMI at which the risk of complications suddenly increases, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. “It’s a rising complication rate as you go into higher BMIs,” Dr. Giori said. “If you operate on someone with a BMI of 39 vs. 41, you’re not going to find that much of a difference [in risk].” But if a medical system enforced a hard BMI cutoff of 40, one patient would qualify for surgery while the other would be barred.
 

Weight not as “modifiable” as previously thought

Weight is often considered a “modifiable factor” for a person considering undergoing total joint arthroplasty, but research suggests that the issue is more complicated. “Obesity is tricky, because some people are successful [in weight loss],” said Dr. Giori. Those tend to be the more memorable stories. “But a large majority have a really hard time losing substantial weight – enough to make a difference in risk,” he continued.

A study conducted in North Carolina found that restricting patients with a BMI over 40 from having elective total joint arthroplasty procedures until their weight was optimized did not result in successful weight loss. Only 20% of patients who originally presented with a BMI above this limit eventually underwent surgery after 2 years, and fewer than half of these patients had achieved a BMI of less than 40 at the time of their surgery. A third of all patients in the study did not return to the orthopedic office after their first visit.

“To hold a hard cutoff when it’s very, very hard to modify ... is essentially telling people that they are not going to ever have surgery,” Dr. Giori said; “I think that can be unfair to some patients.”

Bariatric surgery is often suggested for patients with obesity who have not experienced successful weight loss with diet and lifestyle changes alone, but bariatric surgery comes with its own complications. Research on outcomes from total joint arthroplasty among patients with who have lost weight with bariatric surgery has yielded mixed results. “I rarely push anyone hard to go that route but present it as an option for certain patients,” said Benjamin M. Stronach, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in Little Rock. He usually brings up bariatric surgery with patients with a BMI in the high 40s or higher to gauge their interest. If patients are already considering weight loss surgery, his office provides referrals.

But even bariatric surgery does not result in successful long-term weight loss for every patient, Dr. Stronach said. He’s seeing more and more patients who come for consultations after having undergone bariatric surgery 10 to 15 years ago. These patients lost a significant amount of weight, but then gained the weight back. He noted that bariatric surgery can be very successful for some patients who adhere to their postbariatric regimen. “We typically see fairly impressive results in the short term,” he said.
 

Patients with obesity benefit from joint replacement

Although patients with obesity are at higher risk for complications from joint replacement surgery, research suggests that these patients can still benefit greatly from these surgeries and that these surgeries remain cost-effective. Some studies have found that patients with obesity tend to have worse outcomes after surgery than patients who are not obese, but often, patients with high BMIs are starting from a lower point, with greater joint pain and limited mobility, Dr. Giori said. But the improvements – that is, net change in measured outcomes – can be greater for obese patients.

“Several studies have shown equal or greater improvements in validated outcome scores, function, and satisfaction compared with nonobese patients after surgery,” authors wrote in a recent review article in which they discuss how to optimize joint replacement surgery for patients with obesity. The article, published in the November 2022 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeon (JAAOS), is part of a collection of review articles by the Movement Is Life Caucus.

Encourage weight loss, but look beyond the number

Rather than adhering to strict BMI cutoffs, some experts urge surgeons to consider the patient as a whole and to evaluate each individual’s overall health and potential risk. Dr. Giori generally considers high BMI as just another comorbidity when assessing a patient’s overall risk. “For a person who only has a high BMI but is otherwise healthy, I see no reason not to go ahead and schedule that person for surgery, because reducing the patient’s BMI will not substantially reduce the patient’s complication risk, and a delay in surgery may adversely affect the patient’s quality of life and ability to earn a living,” he said.

“If someone is between a BMI of 40 and 45, we are definitely going to have a discussion about weight,” Dr. Stronach said. He generally counsels against surgery for any patient with a BMI at 45 or above. He wants patients to have a BMI below 40 before surgery but considers individual cases for exceptions. “We will still move forward at times with someone with a BMI of 41, as an example, who is otherwise healthy,” he said. Similarly, if a patient has lost a significant amount of weight (e.g., the patient’s BMI was reduced from 50 to 41), the patient is actively engaged in improving their health, and surgeons believe the patient has significantly reduced their risk, “a lot of time, we’re not going to draw a line in the sand right at [a BMI of] 40,” he said.

While using a BMI of under 35 or 40 as a guideline when starting to work with patients is reasonable, working toward a weight loss of 5%-10% of total body weight is another goal to consider, authors advise in the JAAOS obesity review article. Research suggests that even a 5% reduction in overall body weight can reduce surgical complications and can improve a patient’s glucose and lipid levels and cardiac profile. Referrals to dietitians and weight loss programs, as well as behavioral counseling, can also be useful in initiating weight loss and keeping patients engaged in the process, the authors wrote.
 

Consider a patient’s comorbidities

Many patients with obesity have comorbidities, such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension, that can also be optimized for surgery so as to lower a patient’s overall risk profile. For patients with diabetes, achieving an A1c of 8% or lower can be a reasonable goal and can reduce risk. “We’ve found that an HbA1c level of 8% or less is something that virtually all diabetics (though not everybody) can reach, and it’s something that can be reached in a reasonable amount of time,” Dr. Giori said. Preoperative use of beta-blockers, continued use of ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers, and behavioral modifications can improve a patient’s cardiac health before surgery.

Malnutrition can be a correctable problem for patients, regardless of BMI. In the Movement Is Life collection of optimization articles, experts recommend that orthopedists screen for malnutrition with blood tests for albumin, vitamin D, transferrin, and total lymphocyte count. Patients with malnutrition should be screened for food insecurity, experts advise, and surgical candidates with deficiencies can be given supplements of omega-3 fatty acids, arginine, and protein shakes.

Surgeon comfort and shared decision-making

Dr. Wiznia emphasized that the patient and surgeon need to discuss the risks of surgery, concerns about potential complications, and how a complication could affect the patient’s life moving forward. “Ultimately, the surgeon needs to make the decision [of whether or not to proceed [with surgery] with the patient,” he said, “but not every surgeon is going to feel comfortable operating on these patients, and not every medical institution is going to have the equipment and the investments to support surgeons doing it.”

Dr. Giori agreed that surgeons should proceed only with surgical cases they feel comfortable with. Certain surgeons may decide not to operate on individuals with higher BMIs because of the potential complications and can refer these patients to more specialized care centers. Operating on larger patients is more difficult and requires surgical skills and expertise that the surgeon may not have, he noted. “What I do object to is a system-wide BMI cutoff – for example, if an insurance company won’t pay for you to have a joint replacement, regardless of where you go or who your surgeon is,” Dr. Giori added. “I think that’s wrong, because it’s not patient centered and it’s basically excluding people from having a life-altering operation.”

Dr. Giori and Dr. Wiznia report no relevant financial relationships. Dr. Stronach is a consultant for DJ Orthopaedics, Johnson & Johnson, and MiCare Path.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

For patients with severe arthritis, joint replacement is considered when more conservative treatments have failed. Because patients with obesity have a higher risk of complications during and after surgery, some surgeons, hospitals, and insurance companies have adopted body mass index cutoffs as a basis for deciding whether to offer patients these elective surgeries. But some experts argue that these cutoffs are arbitrary, exclude patients who can still benefit from the surgery, and can increase disparities in care.

“By enforcing cutoffs in general, you’re losing the ability for each surgeon to determine who they want to operate on,” said Daniel Wiznia, MD, assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. He is on the leadership committee of the Movement Is Life Caucus, a nonprofit group focused on eliminating disparities in musculoskeletal health. “For every surgeon, it’s up to them to decide if they feel comfortable doing the surgery,” he noted in an interview. “My guidance for that would be, don’t just say no because of the number – look at the patient’s entire medical profile.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 42% of adults in the United States have a BMI over 30, and 9.2% of adults have a BMI over 40. This excess weight puts additional stress on joints: When a person is walking, experts estimate that the force on the knees can be two to three times someone’s body weight. Over time, this pressure can wear down the cartilage on joints.

As a result, people who are overweight or obese are more likely to develop osteoarthritis and to need joint replacements. According to a Canadian study, patients with a BMI of 30-35 are 3.4 times as likely to require a hip replacement and are 8.5 times as likely to require a knee replacement compared to individuals with a BMI in the “healthy weight” range. With a BMI above 40, individuals were 8.5 times more likely to need a hip replacement and were 32.7 times as likely to need a knee replacement.
 

More complications, greater expense

While there are no universally recommended BMI cutoffs for joint replacement surgery, it is not uncommon for institutions to require that patients have a BMI below a certain value (usually 35-40) to proceed with surgery. A 2013 survey of physicians from the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons found that 52% of surgeons required a BMI below 40 to qualify for surgery.

One of the main reasons for these cutoffs is the elevated risk of complications during and after surgery. Research suggests that obesity is associated with higher rates of wound dehiscence, prosthetic joint infection (PJI), and revision total joint arthroplasty. One 2016 study suggests that patients with a BMI of 35-39.9 are twice as likely to experience PJI compared to patients with a BMI below 35. For patients with a BMI of 40 or higher, PJI is four times as likely.

Another study found that patients whose BMI is 35-40 and who undergo total joint arthroplasty have a 6.4-fold greater risk of deep incision infection. For those with a BMI over 40, that rises to a 12.9-fold increased risk compared to patients with a BMI of 18.5-25. Patients with obesity tend to have other comorbidities that can increase the risk of complications during surgery, such as type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and chronic kidney disease.

Because of the increased risk of complications, health care costs tend to be higher for patients with obesity. The growing popularity of bundled health payments can discourage operating on patients who are more likely to experience complications, such as patients with high BMIs, noted Dr. Wiznia.

Research suggests that minorities and people with lower socioeconomic status are disproportionately affected by these cutoffs. According to the CDC, among non-Hispanic Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, rates of obesity are higher than among their White counterparts, and these patients are less likely to undergo joint replacement. Strictly enforcing this eligibility criterion can worsen those disparities. A study involving 21,294 adults over age 50 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that requiring a BMI of under 35 for total joint arthroplasty resulted in Black patients being 39% less likely to be eligible for surgery than White patients. And individuals with an annual household income under $45,000 were 19% less likely to qualify for surgery than those with a household income above $45,000.
 

BMI no better than other risk factors

Although high BMI is independently associated with a higher risk of complications, the increased risk of complications conferred by a BMI at or above 40 is similar to or lower than those of other comorbidities that surgeons generally accept, said Nicholas Giori, MD, PhD, professor of orthopedic surgery at Stanford (Calif.) University, and chief of orthopedic surgery at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. These other comorbidities include age older than 75, hypertension that requires medication, and insulin-controlled diabetes. “The independent risk of just having the diagnosis of insulin-dependent diabetes is actually comparable to the independent risk of having obesity by itself,” he told this news organization, “and all of us operate on [patients with] diabetes.”

Also, there is no BMI at which the risk of complications suddenly increases, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. “It’s a rising complication rate as you go into higher BMIs,” Dr. Giori said. “If you operate on someone with a BMI of 39 vs. 41, you’re not going to find that much of a difference [in risk].” But if a medical system enforced a hard BMI cutoff of 40, one patient would qualify for surgery while the other would be barred.
 

Weight not as “modifiable” as previously thought

Weight is often considered a “modifiable factor” for a person considering undergoing total joint arthroplasty, but research suggests that the issue is more complicated. “Obesity is tricky, because some people are successful [in weight loss],” said Dr. Giori. Those tend to be the more memorable stories. “But a large majority have a really hard time losing substantial weight – enough to make a difference in risk,” he continued.

A study conducted in North Carolina found that restricting patients with a BMI over 40 from having elective total joint arthroplasty procedures until their weight was optimized did not result in successful weight loss. Only 20% of patients who originally presented with a BMI above this limit eventually underwent surgery after 2 years, and fewer than half of these patients had achieved a BMI of less than 40 at the time of their surgery. A third of all patients in the study did not return to the orthopedic office after their first visit.

“To hold a hard cutoff when it’s very, very hard to modify ... is essentially telling people that they are not going to ever have surgery,” Dr. Giori said; “I think that can be unfair to some patients.”

Bariatric surgery is often suggested for patients with obesity who have not experienced successful weight loss with diet and lifestyle changes alone, but bariatric surgery comes with its own complications. Research on outcomes from total joint arthroplasty among patients with who have lost weight with bariatric surgery has yielded mixed results. “I rarely push anyone hard to go that route but present it as an option for certain patients,” said Benjamin M. Stronach, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in Little Rock. He usually brings up bariatric surgery with patients with a BMI in the high 40s or higher to gauge their interest. If patients are already considering weight loss surgery, his office provides referrals.

But even bariatric surgery does not result in successful long-term weight loss for every patient, Dr. Stronach said. He’s seeing more and more patients who come for consultations after having undergone bariatric surgery 10 to 15 years ago. These patients lost a significant amount of weight, but then gained the weight back. He noted that bariatric surgery can be very successful for some patients who adhere to their postbariatric regimen. “We typically see fairly impressive results in the short term,” he said.
 

Patients with obesity benefit from joint replacement

Although patients with obesity are at higher risk for complications from joint replacement surgery, research suggests that these patients can still benefit greatly from these surgeries and that these surgeries remain cost-effective. Some studies have found that patients with obesity tend to have worse outcomes after surgery than patients who are not obese, but often, patients with high BMIs are starting from a lower point, with greater joint pain and limited mobility, Dr. Giori said. But the improvements – that is, net change in measured outcomes – can be greater for obese patients.

“Several studies have shown equal or greater improvements in validated outcome scores, function, and satisfaction compared with nonobese patients after surgery,” authors wrote in a recent review article in which they discuss how to optimize joint replacement surgery for patients with obesity. The article, published in the November 2022 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeon (JAAOS), is part of a collection of review articles by the Movement Is Life Caucus.

Encourage weight loss, but look beyond the number

Rather than adhering to strict BMI cutoffs, some experts urge surgeons to consider the patient as a whole and to evaluate each individual’s overall health and potential risk. Dr. Giori generally considers high BMI as just another comorbidity when assessing a patient’s overall risk. “For a person who only has a high BMI but is otherwise healthy, I see no reason not to go ahead and schedule that person for surgery, because reducing the patient’s BMI will not substantially reduce the patient’s complication risk, and a delay in surgery may adversely affect the patient’s quality of life and ability to earn a living,” he said.

“If someone is between a BMI of 40 and 45, we are definitely going to have a discussion about weight,” Dr. Stronach said. He generally counsels against surgery for any patient with a BMI at 45 or above. He wants patients to have a BMI below 40 before surgery but considers individual cases for exceptions. “We will still move forward at times with someone with a BMI of 41, as an example, who is otherwise healthy,” he said. Similarly, if a patient has lost a significant amount of weight (e.g., the patient’s BMI was reduced from 50 to 41), the patient is actively engaged in improving their health, and surgeons believe the patient has significantly reduced their risk, “a lot of time, we’re not going to draw a line in the sand right at [a BMI of] 40,” he said.

While using a BMI of under 35 or 40 as a guideline when starting to work with patients is reasonable, working toward a weight loss of 5%-10% of total body weight is another goal to consider, authors advise in the JAAOS obesity review article. Research suggests that even a 5% reduction in overall body weight can reduce surgical complications and can improve a patient’s glucose and lipid levels and cardiac profile. Referrals to dietitians and weight loss programs, as well as behavioral counseling, can also be useful in initiating weight loss and keeping patients engaged in the process, the authors wrote.
 

Consider a patient’s comorbidities

Many patients with obesity have comorbidities, such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension, that can also be optimized for surgery so as to lower a patient’s overall risk profile. For patients with diabetes, achieving an A1c of 8% or lower can be a reasonable goal and can reduce risk. “We’ve found that an HbA1c level of 8% or less is something that virtually all diabetics (though not everybody) can reach, and it’s something that can be reached in a reasonable amount of time,” Dr. Giori said. Preoperative use of beta-blockers, continued use of ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers, and behavioral modifications can improve a patient’s cardiac health before surgery.

Malnutrition can be a correctable problem for patients, regardless of BMI. In the Movement Is Life collection of optimization articles, experts recommend that orthopedists screen for malnutrition with blood tests for albumin, vitamin D, transferrin, and total lymphocyte count. Patients with malnutrition should be screened for food insecurity, experts advise, and surgical candidates with deficiencies can be given supplements of omega-3 fatty acids, arginine, and protein shakes.

Surgeon comfort and shared decision-making

Dr. Wiznia emphasized that the patient and surgeon need to discuss the risks of surgery, concerns about potential complications, and how a complication could affect the patient’s life moving forward. “Ultimately, the surgeon needs to make the decision [of whether or not to proceed [with surgery] with the patient,” he said, “but not every surgeon is going to feel comfortable operating on these patients, and not every medical institution is going to have the equipment and the investments to support surgeons doing it.”

Dr. Giori agreed that surgeons should proceed only with surgical cases they feel comfortable with. Certain surgeons may decide not to operate on individuals with higher BMIs because of the potential complications and can refer these patients to more specialized care centers. Operating on larger patients is more difficult and requires surgical skills and expertise that the surgeon may not have, he noted. “What I do object to is a system-wide BMI cutoff – for example, if an insurance company won’t pay for you to have a joint replacement, regardless of where you go or who your surgeon is,” Dr. Giori added. “I think that’s wrong, because it’s not patient centered and it’s basically excluding people from having a life-altering operation.”

Dr. Giori and Dr. Wiznia report no relevant financial relationships. Dr. Stronach is a consultant for DJ Orthopaedics, Johnson & Johnson, and MiCare Path.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

For patients with severe arthritis, joint replacement is considered when more conservative treatments have failed. Because patients with obesity have a higher risk of complications during and after surgery, some surgeons, hospitals, and insurance companies have adopted body mass index cutoffs as a basis for deciding whether to offer patients these elective surgeries. But some experts argue that these cutoffs are arbitrary, exclude patients who can still benefit from the surgery, and can increase disparities in care.

“By enforcing cutoffs in general, you’re losing the ability for each surgeon to determine who they want to operate on,” said Daniel Wiznia, MD, assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Yale University, New Haven, Conn. He is on the leadership committee of the Movement Is Life Caucus, a nonprofit group focused on eliminating disparities in musculoskeletal health. “For every surgeon, it’s up to them to decide if they feel comfortable doing the surgery,” he noted in an interview. “My guidance for that would be, don’t just say no because of the number – look at the patient’s entire medical profile.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 42% of adults in the United States have a BMI over 30, and 9.2% of adults have a BMI over 40. This excess weight puts additional stress on joints: When a person is walking, experts estimate that the force on the knees can be two to three times someone’s body weight. Over time, this pressure can wear down the cartilage on joints.

As a result, people who are overweight or obese are more likely to develop osteoarthritis and to need joint replacements. According to a Canadian study, patients with a BMI of 30-35 are 3.4 times as likely to require a hip replacement and are 8.5 times as likely to require a knee replacement compared to individuals with a BMI in the “healthy weight” range. With a BMI above 40, individuals were 8.5 times more likely to need a hip replacement and were 32.7 times as likely to need a knee replacement.
 

More complications, greater expense

While there are no universally recommended BMI cutoffs for joint replacement surgery, it is not uncommon for institutions to require that patients have a BMI below a certain value (usually 35-40) to proceed with surgery. A 2013 survey of physicians from the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons found that 52% of surgeons required a BMI below 40 to qualify for surgery.

One of the main reasons for these cutoffs is the elevated risk of complications during and after surgery. Research suggests that obesity is associated with higher rates of wound dehiscence, prosthetic joint infection (PJI), and revision total joint arthroplasty. One 2016 study suggests that patients with a BMI of 35-39.9 are twice as likely to experience PJI compared to patients with a BMI below 35. For patients with a BMI of 40 or higher, PJI is four times as likely.

Another study found that patients whose BMI is 35-40 and who undergo total joint arthroplasty have a 6.4-fold greater risk of deep incision infection. For those with a BMI over 40, that rises to a 12.9-fold increased risk compared to patients with a BMI of 18.5-25. Patients with obesity tend to have other comorbidities that can increase the risk of complications during surgery, such as type 2 diabetes, coronary artery disease, and chronic kidney disease.

Because of the increased risk of complications, health care costs tend to be higher for patients with obesity. The growing popularity of bundled health payments can discourage operating on patients who are more likely to experience complications, such as patients with high BMIs, noted Dr. Wiznia.

Research suggests that minorities and people with lower socioeconomic status are disproportionately affected by these cutoffs. According to the CDC, among non-Hispanic Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, rates of obesity are higher than among their White counterparts, and these patients are less likely to undergo joint replacement. Strictly enforcing this eligibility criterion can worsen those disparities. A study involving 21,294 adults over age 50 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) found that requiring a BMI of under 35 for total joint arthroplasty resulted in Black patients being 39% less likely to be eligible for surgery than White patients. And individuals with an annual household income under $45,000 were 19% less likely to qualify for surgery than those with a household income above $45,000.
 

BMI no better than other risk factors

Although high BMI is independently associated with a higher risk of complications, the increased risk of complications conferred by a BMI at or above 40 is similar to or lower than those of other comorbidities that surgeons generally accept, said Nicholas Giori, MD, PhD, professor of orthopedic surgery at Stanford (Calif.) University, and chief of orthopedic surgery at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. These other comorbidities include age older than 75, hypertension that requires medication, and insulin-controlled diabetes. “The independent risk of just having the diagnosis of insulin-dependent diabetes is actually comparable to the independent risk of having obesity by itself,” he told this news organization, “and all of us operate on [patients with] diabetes.”

Also, there is no BMI at which the risk of complications suddenly increases, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. “It’s a rising complication rate as you go into higher BMIs,” Dr. Giori said. “If you operate on someone with a BMI of 39 vs. 41, you’re not going to find that much of a difference [in risk].” But if a medical system enforced a hard BMI cutoff of 40, one patient would qualify for surgery while the other would be barred.
 

Weight not as “modifiable” as previously thought

Weight is often considered a “modifiable factor” for a person considering undergoing total joint arthroplasty, but research suggests that the issue is more complicated. “Obesity is tricky, because some people are successful [in weight loss],” said Dr. Giori. Those tend to be the more memorable stories. “But a large majority have a really hard time losing substantial weight – enough to make a difference in risk,” he continued.

A study conducted in North Carolina found that restricting patients with a BMI over 40 from having elective total joint arthroplasty procedures until their weight was optimized did not result in successful weight loss. Only 20% of patients who originally presented with a BMI above this limit eventually underwent surgery after 2 years, and fewer than half of these patients had achieved a BMI of less than 40 at the time of their surgery. A third of all patients in the study did not return to the orthopedic office after their first visit.

“To hold a hard cutoff when it’s very, very hard to modify ... is essentially telling people that they are not going to ever have surgery,” Dr. Giori said; “I think that can be unfair to some patients.”

Bariatric surgery is often suggested for patients with obesity who have not experienced successful weight loss with diet and lifestyle changes alone, but bariatric surgery comes with its own complications. Research on outcomes from total joint arthroplasty among patients with who have lost weight with bariatric surgery has yielded mixed results. “I rarely push anyone hard to go that route but present it as an option for certain patients,” said Benjamin M. Stronach, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, in Little Rock. He usually brings up bariatric surgery with patients with a BMI in the high 40s or higher to gauge their interest. If patients are already considering weight loss surgery, his office provides referrals.

But even bariatric surgery does not result in successful long-term weight loss for every patient, Dr. Stronach said. He’s seeing more and more patients who come for consultations after having undergone bariatric surgery 10 to 15 years ago. These patients lost a significant amount of weight, but then gained the weight back. He noted that bariatric surgery can be very successful for some patients who adhere to their postbariatric regimen. “We typically see fairly impressive results in the short term,” he said.
 

Patients with obesity benefit from joint replacement

Although patients with obesity are at higher risk for complications from joint replacement surgery, research suggests that these patients can still benefit greatly from these surgeries and that these surgeries remain cost-effective. Some studies have found that patients with obesity tend to have worse outcomes after surgery than patients who are not obese, but often, patients with high BMIs are starting from a lower point, with greater joint pain and limited mobility, Dr. Giori said. But the improvements – that is, net change in measured outcomes – can be greater for obese patients.

“Several studies have shown equal or greater improvements in validated outcome scores, function, and satisfaction compared with nonobese patients after surgery,” authors wrote in a recent review article in which they discuss how to optimize joint replacement surgery for patients with obesity. The article, published in the November 2022 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeon (JAAOS), is part of a collection of review articles by the Movement Is Life Caucus.

Encourage weight loss, but look beyond the number

Rather than adhering to strict BMI cutoffs, some experts urge surgeons to consider the patient as a whole and to evaluate each individual’s overall health and potential risk. Dr. Giori generally considers high BMI as just another comorbidity when assessing a patient’s overall risk. “For a person who only has a high BMI but is otherwise healthy, I see no reason not to go ahead and schedule that person for surgery, because reducing the patient’s BMI will not substantially reduce the patient’s complication risk, and a delay in surgery may adversely affect the patient’s quality of life and ability to earn a living,” he said.

“If someone is between a BMI of 40 and 45, we are definitely going to have a discussion about weight,” Dr. Stronach said. He generally counsels against surgery for any patient with a BMI at 45 or above. He wants patients to have a BMI below 40 before surgery but considers individual cases for exceptions. “We will still move forward at times with someone with a BMI of 41, as an example, who is otherwise healthy,” he said. Similarly, if a patient has lost a significant amount of weight (e.g., the patient’s BMI was reduced from 50 to 41), the patient is actively engaged in improving their health, and surgeons believe the patient has significantly reduced their risk, “a lot of time, we’re not going to draw a line in the sand right at [a BMI of] 40,” he said.

While using a BMI of under 35 or 40 as a guideline when starting to work with patients is reasonable, working toward a weight loss of 5%-10% of total body weight is another goal to consider, authors advise in the JAAOS obesity review article. Research suggests that even a 5% reduction in overall body weight can reduce surgical complications and can improve a patient’s glucose and lipid levels and cardiac profile. Referrals to dietitians and weight loss programs, as well as behavioral counseling, can also be useful in initiating weight loss and keeping patients engaged in the process, the authors wrote.
 

Consider a patient’s comorbidities

Many patients with obesity have comorbidities, such as type 2 diabetes and hypertension, that can also be optimized for surgery so as to lower a patient’s overall risk profile. For patients with diabetes, achieving an A1c of 8% or lower can be a reasonable goal and can reduce risk. “We’ve found that an HbA1c level of 8% or less is something that virtually all diabetics (though not everybody) can reach, and it’s something that can be reached in a reasonable amount of time,” Dr. Giori said. Preoperative use of beta-blockers, continued use of ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers, and behavioral modifications can improve a patient’s cardiac health before surgery.

Malnutrition can be a correctable problem for patients, regardless of BMI. In the Movement Is Life collection of optimization articles, experts recommend that orthopedists screen for malnutrition with blood tests for albumin, vitamin D, transferrin, and total lymphocyte count. Patients with malnutrition should be screened for food insecurity, experts advise, and surgical candidates with deficiencies can be given supplements of omega-3 fatty acids, arginine, and protein shakes.

Surgeon comfort and shared decision-making

Dr. Wiznia emphasized that the patient and surgeon need to discuss the risks of surgery, concerns about potential complications, and how a complication could affect the patient’s life moving forward. “Ultimately, the surgeon needs to make the decision [of whether or not to proceed [with surgery] with the patient,” he said, “but not every surgeon is going to feel comfortable operating on these patients, and not every medical institution is going to have the equipment and the investments to support surgeons doing it.”

Dr. Giori agreed that surgeons should proceed only with surgical cases they feel comfortable with. Certain surgeons may decide not to operate on individuals with higher BMIs because of the potential complications and can refer these patients to more specialized care centers. Operating on larger patients is more difficult and requires surgical skills and expertise that the surgeon may not have, he noted. “What I do object to is a system-wide BMI cutoff – for example, if an insurance company won’t pay for you to have a joint replacement, regardless of where you go or who your surgeon is,” Dr. Giori added. “I think that’s wrong, because it’s not patient centered and it’s basically excluding people from having a life-altering operation.”

Dr. Giori and Dr. Wiznia report no relevant financial relationships. Dr. Stronach is a consultant for DJ Orthopaedics, Johnson & Johnson, and MiCare Path.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.