Summer 2024 (Volume 34, Number 2)

RheumJeopardy! 2024

By Philip A. Baer, MDCM, FRCPC, FACR

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Dr. Philip Baer, host of RheumJeopardy! 2024, pictured with Dr. Timothy Kwok (Team Captain of the East), Dr. Herman Tam (Team Captain of the West) and Dr. Raheem Kherani (Chair of this year's event).

RheumJeopardy! returned as a plenary session at the 2024 CRA Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) in Winnipeg for the ninth consecutive year, now ensconced in the final timeslot before the Friday night gala. The 2024 event was again hybrid in nature, allowing both live and virtual attendees to answer the questions. Seamless integration between the PheedLoopGo! meeting app, and the teams from BBBlanc and MKEM prevented any technical issues. I moderated from the state-of-the-art Winnipeg conference centre. After a West victory by 4,000 to 0 in the 2023 edition, the winning West captain of 2023, Dr. Raheem Kherani from Vancouver, fulfilled the roles of Chair and scorekeeper. We maintained the traditional East versus West format, with Mississauga the dividing line this year, placing those from Western University in the West as per their name. Our team captains were Dr. Timothy Kwok, a rheumatology fellow from Toronto, and Dr. Herman Tam, a pediatric rheumatologist from Vancouver, both members of the CRA ASM Program Committee. Only the members of the team whose captain had selected a question voted on the answer. The team captains selected the Final Jeopardy wagers and answered the Final Jeopardy question on their own.

The session again drew a large in-person audience of enthusiastic participants, including rheumatologists, trainees, allied health professionals and industry and patient attendees. The practice question related to the 2023 Oxford University Press Word of the Year, “Rizz”. The audience correctly figured out that “rizz” is a shortened form of the word charisma, and not frizzy, risotto or terrazzo.

Fourteen questions were selected in the main game. Categories included Pediatric Rheumatology (designed before I knew that a pediatric rheumatologist would be one of the team captains), Guidelines, Old Drugs/New Tricks, Sight Diagnoses, Potpourri, and a special category honouring the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Rheumatology. Questions were designed to be challenging, but the two teams managed well, answering almost every question correctly and generating high scores. The $800 and $1000 rows of questions were the most frequently chosen. Questions selected included those related to the DADA2 syndrome, myositis-specific antibodies, hypermobility syndrome, new Assessment of SpondyloArthritis International Society-European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (ASAS-EULAR) Spondyloarthritis (SpA) guidelines, brepocitinib and exhausted T cells. Voters correctly identified apremilast as potentially useful to treat alcohol use disorder, but not metformin to reduce the risk of joint replacement in diabetics with osteoarthritis. The CRA’s newest board member, Dr. Mary Purcell, received a shoutout as the winner of the 2023 ACR Image Competition Grand Prize for her case of systemic light chain amyloidosis. Participants also knew that the lower extremity counterpart of “mechanic’s hands” is referred to as “hiker’s feet”, and that the panda sign is an imaging feature seen in sarcoidosis.

At the end of the main Jeopardy round, the score favoured East with 6,000 over West with 5,200. The Final Jeopardy category was the traditional “Famous Canadian Rheumatologists”. The question focused on which two Canadians were recognized as Great Women in Rheumatology by Jack Cush on RheumNow in 2023. The choices included various combinations of Drs. Dafna Gladman, Janet Pope, Claire Bombardier and Gillian Hawker. The correct answer was the duo of Drs. Gladman and Bombardier. The answer was accompanied by an inspirational quotation from Dr. Tuhina Neogi, a Toronto-trained rheumatologist now practicing in Boston, on the value of having female mentors, such as Drs. Gladman, Bombardier and Hawker, during her training.

Both team captains answered correctly. Team East wagered everything, while Team West wagered 33%. That left East as the winning team with 12,000 versus West’s score of 6,916. This means Dr. Tim Kwok will likely chair RheumJeopardy! in 2025 in Calgary if the ASM Scientific Committee grants us a place on the agenda for a tenth year. I am already preparing a question bank if we are renewed for another season. Thanks to everyone who participated, the anonymous photographers who sent me photos for this article, and everyone who posted, reposted and tweeted about RheumJeopardy! on X and LinkedIn. Special thanks as well to Dr. Marinka Twilt, the ASM Program Committee chair, who tracked the questions we used in 2024 to ensure they do not reappear in future years.

Philip A. Baer, MDCM, FRCPC, FACR
Editor-in-chief, CRAJ
Scarborough, Ontario