Speaking
Beyond Sicca
The talk
Beyond Sicca was presented as grand rounds at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2022, during Dr. Luebker's immunology and rheumatology fellowship there. Grand rounds is the main teaching forum in an academic department, and presenting one as a fellow means the department judged the material worth the whole department's time.
The word sicca means dryness, and it's the feature most clinicians associate with Sjogren's disease. Dry eyes and dry mouth are what get tested for, and they're usually what prompts the referral in the first place. The title indicates a talk about everything else the disease does to a person.
Why the subject counts clinically
Sjogren's is often treated as a nuisance diagnosis rather than a systemic autoimmune disease, and that framing causes real harm. It can involve the lungs, kidneys, and peripheral nerves, it comes with a raised risk of lymphoma, and the fatigue it causes is frequently disabling in people whose dryness is mild. A patient whose disease is understood only as dryness may never be assessed for any of that.
The mismatch between how serious the disease can be and how minor it sounds is one reason people with Sjogren's wait a long time for a diagnosis. Stating that mismatch to a room of physicians from every specialty is a reasonable use of grand rounds. Most of those physicians will see patients with Sjogren's disease without being the ones managing it.