Vectra is being utilized by some rheumatologists as a tool to assess disease activity remotely in order to minimize the need for in-office visits. Vectra can help risk assess patients for control of their disease and monitor if drug therapy changes are needed. This approach to managing patients remotely to minimize exposure may be helpful to you in your practice.
Vectra is an advanced blood test that simultaneously measures 12 biomarkers and produces a personalized score that places a patient’s RA disease activity into a low, moderate, or high range. The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) included MBDA (Vectra) as a disease activity measure that can be used in routine clinical practice in the 2019 updated disease activity recommendations.1
Vectra is a valued disease activity measure and a useful tool in helping estimation of disease activity and prognosis for progression of joint damage. Vectra can be used as a tool to help sort out discordance when patients and providers differ in their global assessments.2
1. England, B.R., Tiong, B.K., Bergman, M.J., Curtis, J.R., Kazi, S., Mikuls, T.R., O’Dell, J.R., Ranganath, V.K., Limanni, A., Suter, L.G. and Michaud, K. (2019), 2019 Update of the American College of Rheumatology. Recommended Rheumatoid Arthritis Disease Activity Measures. Arthritis Care Res, 71: 1540-1555. doi:10.1002/acr.24042. ©2019, American College of Rheumatology. All rights reserved. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/acr.24042. Copyright ©2000-2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. or related companies. All rights reserved.
2. https://www.healio.com/rheumatology/rheumatoid-arthritis/news/online/%7B2977ca2f-360e-4063-928d-5a638657da49%7D/acr-permits-use-of-multibiomarker-disease-activity-score-in-updated-ra-recommendations
Physicians and patients are increasingly and successfully using telemedicine to prevent patients from coming into the office, especially during times when it is necessary to minimize risk of transmission. Physicians and patients can share information in real time from one computer screen to another. Challenges that may be presented with a telemedicine visit include the inability to screen patients through touch, ultrasound, MRI, or x-ray.
Use Vectra to help guide medical management decisions and engage with patients via telemedicine. Vectra provides a score between 1 and 100 to categorize RA disease activity into a low, moderate, or high category to help guide medical management decisions. During a telemedicine visit discussion, the Vectra result can help inform you of the level of your patients’ RA disease activity. This information can help you and your patient determine if an in-person visit is required, if a change in therapy is needed, or if the patient needs to be managed differently due to high disease activity. You can also use Vectra to help determine if a patient’s disease is under control, even when the patient may be communicating differently, all via telemedicine visits.
Vectra can help you develop a patient priority plan for your office by identifying RA patients that need to have an in-office visit and those who can be best served with telemedicine. Determine the type of visit and frequency of visits based on the patient’s Vectra Score.
* Reminder:Mobile phlebotomists provided by Myriad can only draw and process Vectra.
Successful telemedicine visits can be easy to achieve if you have prepared and set appropriate expectations with your patients.
Please reach out if you need Vectra test kits, have questions, or need support.
