Julius Birnbaum, MD

My book "Living Well With Autoimmune Diseases: A Rheumatologist's Guide To Taking Charge of Your Health (Johns Hopkins Press) reflects my interest in patient outreach, providing effective, compassionate care to a wide spectrum of patients and family beyond my clinical practice. The overall theme is empowerment helping patients become more knowledgeable advocates in their healthcare. 

Chapters are devoted to multiple rheumatic diseases, including lupus, Sjogren's disease, vasculitis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, myositis, and scleroderma and how disorders are inter-related, emphasizing that "no autoimmune disease is an island." there are chapters devoted to health-wellness issues for diet, emotional health, and fibromyalgia. I also present captivating and dramatic patient narratives. 

If you are a reader, you will truly be "taking charge of your health, feeling empowered and optimistic. As a neurologist and rheumatologist, my research has focused on elucidating clinical features, mechanisms, and treatment for patients with neurological complications of rheumatic diseases. In particular, we have identified under-recognized neurological phenotypes (i.e. small-fiber neuropathies and subtypes of demyelinating syndromes), defined how such neurological phenotypes may be associated with novel biomarkers (anti-neuronal antibodies and neuroimaging strategies), and powerfully leveraged these studies to develop new diagnostic and treatment approaches. 

I am also an author focusing on how patient language can help illuminate diagnostic and treatment opportunities that may be overlooked by physicians. I have an interest in teaching trainees how the metaphors and narratives that patients use to describe pain can be used as hypothesis-driven strategies to define mechanisms and treatment in autoimmune diseases.

As a neurologist and a rheumatologist, I have a particular interest in caring for patients with Central Nervous System (CNS) complications of autoimmune diseases. These hybrid neurology-rheumatology syndromes present exciting challenges which can significantly improve a patient’s quality-of-life. Because of these multi-disciplinary challenges, I constantly try to take advantage of the talents and amazing insights that can be provided by a potential wealth of collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh.

Amongst all diseases, I think that rheumatology arguably requires an ongoing love and appreciation of internal medicine that is hard-won during the residency years. As a consequence, a major career-goal is to use the perspective of rheumatology as a catalyst such that I can still be an effective physician and teacher of internal medicine. As a result, I relish opportunities to serve as an in-patient attending on internal medicine services, and teaching internal medicine residents and medical students in this context. During these rotations, I explore with trainees how the unique interconnectivity between rheumatology and internal medicine can offer exciting glimpses into a broad subset of internal medicine disorders that might have subtle or unrecognized immune-mediated mechanisms. 

I am seeking to develop a hybrid neurology-rheumatology clinic, focusing on patients presenting with multi-disciplinary illnesses that include neurological complications of rheumatic diseases. My goal is to include trainees at different levels and from different disciplinary backgrounds, including medical students, neurology and internal medicine residents, and neuroimmunology as well as rheumatology fellows. I also mentor internal medicine residents who are unsure about post-residency plans. I am also involved in working with internal medicine residents who need remedial work to improve clinical skillsets or their base of medical knowledge. Yet I find such interactions to be mutually rewarding and rejuvenating. In doing so I am aware that it is an opportunity to instill self-confidence, and to ensure that a trainee's perspective of her medical career is always viewed as a joyous privilege.