Development of a personalized shared decision-making tool for knee osteoarthritis and user-testing with African American and Latina women.

Background: Patients with chronic knee pain are often unaware of treatment options and likely outcomes-information that is critical to decision-making. A consistent framework for communicating patient-personalized information enables clinicians to provide consistent, targeted, and relevant information. Our objective was to user-test a shared decision-making (SDM) tool for chronic knee pain.

Potential Role of Cost and Quality of Life in Treatment Decisions for Arthritis-Related Knee Pain in African American and Latina Women.

Objective: The present study was undertaken to investigate whether Latina and African American women with arthritis-related knee pain and primary care providers who treat them believe their treatment decisions would benefit from having more information about the impact of treatment on their quality of life, medical care costs, and work productivity.

Methods: We conducted 4 focus groups of Latina and African American women over age 45 years who had knee pain. We also conducted 2 focus groups with primary care providers who treated Latina and African American women for knee pain.

A Fresh Perspective on a Familiar Problem: Examining Disparities in Knee Osteoarthritis Using a Markov Model.

Background: Disparities in the presentation of knee osteoarthritis (OA) and in the utilization of treatment across sex, racial, and ethnic groups in the United States are well documented.

Objectives: We used a Markov model to calculate lifetime costs of knee OA treatment. We then used the model results to compute costs of disparities in treatment by race, ethnicity, sex, and socioeconomic status.

Musculoskeletal healthcare disparities: influence of patient sex, race, and ethnicity on utilization of total joint arthroplasty.

Total joint arthroplasty is an effective treatment of musculoskeletal diseases including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, trauma, and other diseases of the major joints. Based on data obtained from the National Inpatient Survey from 2000 through 2010, substantial differences in the rates of utilization of total hip, knee, and shoulder arthroplasty were detected with respect to race, ethnicity, and gender/sex. The results of this study support the likelihood that it is the interaction between multiple factors (patient, physician, and system/institutional) that contributes to musculoskeletal health disparities.

Influence of Leishmania (Viannia) species on the response to antimonial treatment in patients with American tegumentary leishmaniasis.

Background: Pentavalent antimonials (SbV) are the first-line chemotherapy for American tegumentary leishmaniasis (ATL). There are, however, reports of the occurrence of treatment failure with these drugs. Few studies in Latin America have compared the response to SbV treatment in ATL caused by different Leishmania species.