Our research focus is connective tissue diseases, including Sjogren's syndrome, and we will describe a standardized approach to saliva and ultrasound in diagnosing Sjogren's syndrome. We hope the protocol will be useful for clinicians unfamiliar with doing ultrasound to enhance its application in clinical practice. Ultrasound is a powerful tool in evaluating various rheumatological conditions, including arthritis, sjogren syndrome, and interstitial lung disease.
It is helpful in diagnosis, monitoring and prognostication. It can be applied as an outcome measure in clinical studies such as detecting subclinical synovitis to assess the risk of rheumatoid arthritis progression. Ultrasound is an operator-dependent procedure and the result may be unreliable if inexperienced, hence performed.
Well validated and quantitative measurements are often needed to standardize the description and reporting of pathological sonographic findings before they can be applied in clinical practice and research. In this procedure, we will describe how to conduct a salivary gland ultrasound in patients with sicker symptoms. This approach is easy to perform and can usually be completed within 10 to 15 minutes.
We'll also demonstrate techniques to perform reliable and reproducible results to ensure the quality of the ultrasound scanning. Our center will continue to research on applying ultrasound in diagnosis and monitoring in rheumatology. We will research utilizing lung ultrasound for screening of interstitial lung disease associated with connective tissue diseases, hoping to improve the current screening strategy for lung fibrosis in rheumatology patients.
