Vasculitis Foundation Canada

By Jon Stewart

VFC announces the 2021 Annual Fall Lectures on ZOOM

Nine Doctors – Nine Vasculitis Lectures, over Four Weekends, starting Saturday, October 2 through Sunday, November 14, 2021. Join us and our speakers from Toronto, London, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver.

VFC has long recognized that patient education is a critical part of our mission, and with your participation we will continue to help improve your care, we’ll find new ways to control vasculitis and of course, together we will find the cause, and the ultimately the cure!

This falls lectures have been organized with the assistance of Dr. Natasha Dehghan in Vancouver.  VFC is pleased to host nine top speakers who will present topics of interest for vasculitis patients and care givers alike. Our speakers and the proposed program* will be as follows:

Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 1 and 2 PM ET
Dr. Joanne Jiang – London, ON,  VFC co-sponsored Dr. Jiang as a vasculitis fellow during the first half of 2021 where, amongst other things, she developed a series of patient tools for the purpose of improving patient outcomes through patient education and tools to assist with each patients vasculitis journey. This will be a workshop on how to use these new resources, and tools, to improve your outcome!

Dr. Elaine Yacyshyn – Professor, Division of Rheumatology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Dr. Yacyshyn will discuss the patient journey in managing vasculitis and will review papers published in this area, as well as common patient presentations. She’ll also update access to care for vasculitis patients when considering quality care. She published a paper on temporal artery biopsies in GCA and will review this material as well as another paper on advances in the treatment of patients with ANCA vasculitis.

Sunday, October 17, 2021 at 1 and 2 PM ET
Dr. Natasha Dehghan – Clinical Assistant Professor, Division of Rheumatology, University of British Columbia, Medical Lead, Mary Pack Arthritis Program, Vasculitis Clinics, Vancouver Coastal Health, Vancouver, B.C. Dr. Dehghan will present a review of two Large Vessel Vasculitis (LVV), diseases, namely Giant Cell Arteritis, or GCA, and Takayasu’s Arteritis, or TAK.

Dr. Alison Clifford – MD, FRCPC, Assistant Professor, Division of Rheumatology University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB Dr. Alison Clifford’s presentation should appeal to many (all!), vasculitis patients as vasculitis patients are at increased risk from cardiovascular disease. Her lecture will simply be titled “Getting to the heart of it: understanding and reducing cardiovascular risk in vasculitis.

Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 1, 2, and 3 PM ET
Dr. Christian Pagnoux, is a key member of the Toronto Vasculitis Clinic at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto ON. He is co-founder of CanVasc, Canada’s clinical and vasculitis research network, and author, or co-author, of numerous vasculitis papers. He will discuss the current thinking on what we know about COVID-19 and vasculitis. He will also review the new vasculitis treatment guidelines from ACR (American College of Rheumatology), versus the new Canadian treatment guidelines. Finally he will “touch on” the updated and evolving vasculitis classification criteria.

Dr. Daniel Ennis – Vancouver, B.C. will do the complete workup on EGPA, from the ground up, including symptoms, lab work, imaging, diagnosis, treatments, prognosis as well as newer papers, new guidelines, and biologic treatments and their availability in Canada.

Dr. Arore Fifi-Mah, Clinical associate professor, Division of Rheumatology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. Dr. FifiMah has studied the adverse effects associated with immunotherapy and advises her vasculitis patients on timing their COVID-19 vaccinations around their immunosuppressive treatments. She will also speak on patient advocacy and education, as well as the use of patient registries in vasculitis research.

Sunday, November 14, 2021 at 1 and 2 PM ET
Dr. Corrie BaldwinVancouver, B.C. Usually, all vasculitis patients are immediately aware of the symptoms of vasculitis as well as the side-effects from treatments like prednisone, but Dr. Baldwin will focus on what patients might expect from the long-term complications of vasculitis and the treatments.

Dr. Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert – MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Director Division of Rheumatology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Dr. Tervaert will speak on what just about every vasculitis patient will experience, and that is fatigue, acutely or chronically, as well as sleeping problems and even anxiety. He will also speak about what every patient wants to prevent and that is how to prevent the recurrence (or relapses), of the disease after being treated for vasculitis

The complete 2021 Lecture Program and registration details will be coming soon. In the meantime, hold these dates and times now! *VFC reserves the right to make program changes as necessary.

Vasculitis Foundation Canada members whose 2020-21 membership is current attend any, or all, lectures for free!

VFC members who need to renew their annual memberships, and non-VFC members, should pay the $20.00 annual membership fee at time of registration and then attend any, or all, lectures for free.

For questions on membership, or to check the status of your current membership, please send an email to: [email protected]