Your IgG4-RD Healthcare Guide

Supporting Better Healthcare Conversations

Living with IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD) can mean coordinating care across multiple specialties and explaining a rare and complex condition to healthcare professionals who may not be familiar with it. 

To help make those conversations easier, the IgG4ward! Foundation developed Your IgG4-RD Healthcare Guide: Living with IgG4-RD: A Healthcare Appointment Guide for Patients and Providers. 

Created with valuable input from IgG4ward! Patient Ambassadors, this practical guide reflects the experiences and needs of people living with IgG4-RD.  It is designed to help patients prepare for appointments, organize important healthcare information, and communicate more effectively with the professionals involved in their care. 

The guide can also be shared with physicians, nurses, specialists, and emergency care teams who may be encountering IgG4-RD for the first time. Its purpose is to support clearer conversations, coordinated care, and shared decision-making. 

What's  inside the Guide?

Your IgG4-RD Healthcare Guide includes practical tools and information to help people living with IgG4-RD navigate their care, including:

• An overview of IgG4-RD for healthcare professionals

• Information about diagnosis, treatment, and care coordination

• Questions to help prepare for healthcare appointments

• A personalized IgG4-RD health snapshot

• Space to document affected organs, medications, treatments, specialists, procedures, and important medical records

• Important clinical considerations and urgent warning signs

• A symptom checklist to support conversations with healthcare providers 

Whether you're newly diagnosed or have been living with IgG4-RD for years, we hope this guide becomes a trusted resource that you can use before appointments, during medical visits, or whenever you need to communicate important information about your health. 

Developed with Patient Ambassador Input

Valuable input from IgG4ward! Patient Ambassadors helped shape this practical guide, ensuring it reflects the real-world experiences and needs of people living with IgG4-RD.  It is designed to help patients prepare for appointments, organize important healthcare information, and communicate more effectively with the professionals involved in their care. 

Their insights helped shape a practical resource designed to support meaningful conversations between patients and healthcare professionals. 

The IgG4ward! Healthcare Guide Series

Your IgG4-RD Healthcare Guide is the first resource in the IgG4ward! Healthcare Guide Series.

Building on this foundational resource, the Foundation will develop a series of organ-specific healthcare guides designed to provide practical information for people living with IgG4-RD affecting different organ systems.

These guides will support patients and caregivers in preparing for appointments, understanding organ-specific considerations, and partnering more effectively with their healthcare teams. 

We look forward to expanding the IgG4ward! Healthcare Guide Series with additional resources that continue to educate, empower, and support the global IgG4-RD community.