Front-line Management of Gout: A Step-by-Step Guide to Best Practice

Credits: 1.25

Fee: None

Expiration Date: January 26, 2011

Multimedia: Slides and Audio

Presented by the Primary Care Network, this online CME activity is designed to provide primary care healthcare providers with “a concise, step-by-step guide to the latest information, tempered with expert opinion, on the modern approaches to the diagnosis and management of gout.” This course covers nonpharmacologic (lifestyle) and pharmacologic approaches to the treatment of acute gout flares and to long-term management. It also stresses “the importance of counseling patients on their commitment to adhering to long-term lifestyle and drug treatment recommendations.”

After completing this course, physicians will be aware that “the long-term goal of gout treatment is to reduce serum urate to <6.0 mg/dL” and will be able to “define the key steps in selecting and individualizing urate-lowering therapy according to the disease stage, together with recognizing the importance of monitoring serum urate levels.”

The course also provides guidance on how to help patients understand that “an important factor in successful management includes their long-term commitment to adherence with the recommended lifestyle and drug interventions.”

Course materials were prepared by D. Wayne Bell, MD, a family practitioner at Bowling Green Family Care Center and medical director of the Diabetes Day Care Center at Wood County Hospital in Bowling Green, OH, and Robert A. Terkeltaub, MD, VA Rheumatology Section Chief and Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

The presenters provide an overview of gout, discuss serum urate as a risk factor for gout, review the factors that are leading to increased gout prevalence in the US, and explore best practices in newly presenting gout.

Other topics covered during this activity include: common precipitating factors of acute gout, features of acute gouty attacks, considerations in differential diagnosis, questions to ask the patient, joint aspiration, criteria for the classification of acute arthritis of primary gout, long-term management goals, therapeutic options and urate-lowering drugs, reasons for urate-lowering treatment failure, and risk factors for severe allopurinol hypersensitivity reaction.

Click here to access this third-party CME program.