Meet Dr. Syed Alam, MD, FACR

About Dr. Alam

Dr. Syed Alam is a double board-certified rheumatologist with more than 10 years of experience and training in musculoskeletal ultrasound. He diagnoses and treats arthritis, autoimmune disease and other conditions affecting the joints, muscles and bones. Dr. Alam is a Fellow of the American College of Rheumatology, a designation the College gives in recognition of commitment to the specialty and to patient care.

Dr. Alam earned a medical degree at King Edward Medical University in Lahore, completed residency training in internal medicine at John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago, and then trained in rheumatology through a fellowship at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, completing it in 2018.

Clinical interests

Dr. Alam's clinical interests span the full range of the specialty, including:

• Rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis
• Ankylosing spondylitis
• Systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus)
• Gout and pseudogout
• Osteoporosis and osteoarthritis
• Vasculitis, polymyalgia rheumatica and temporal arteritis
• Arthritis associated with inflammatory bowel disease
• Systemic sclerosis and scleroderma
• Myositis
• Sjögren's syndrome
• Tendonitis and bursitis

Training and credentials

• Medical degree: King Edward Medical University, Lahore, Pakistan (2010)
• Residency: Internal medicine, John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, Chicago, Illinois (2013 to 2016)
• Fellowship: Rheumatology, Temple University Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2016 to 2018)
• Board certification: Internal medicine, American Board of Internal Medicine
• Board certification: Rheumatology, American Board of Internal Medicine
• Fellow of the American College of Rheumatology (FACR)
• PLACEHOLDER: Texas medical licence number and NPI number

Photograph used for illustration. It does not show a patient of this practice.

What board certification in rheumatology actually means

The phrase appears on nearly every medical website and is rarely explained, so it is worth setting out what stands behind it. In the United States, a board-certified rheumatologist has completed a specific and lengthy sequence.

• Four years of medical school
• Three years of residency training in internal medicine
• Certification by examination in internal medicine
• A further two to three years of subspecialty fellowship in rheumatology
• A separate certifying examination in rheumatology
• Ongoing maintenance of certification, reassessed on a defined cycle

That is a minimum of nine years of training after the undergraduate degree, and the rheumatology fellowship is the part that matters most here. It is where a physician learns to distinguish a swollen joint from a painful one, to read the pattern across a whole body rather than a single complaint, and to manage immunosuppressive treatment safely over years.

Why the distinction from a general physician matters

A primary care physician manages a very wide range of conditions competently and refers the ones that need depth. Inflammatory arthritis is one of those, because the diagnostic window is narrow, the treatments carry real risk, and the monitoring is specific. None of that is a criticism of primary care; it is the reason subspecialties exist.

How to verify these credentials yourself

You should not have to take a website's word for any of this, and every claim on this page is independently checkable in a few minutes. We would rather you did.

Board certification

The American Board of Internal Medicine maintains a public certification lookup covering both internal medicine and its subspecialties, including rheumatology. Searching a physician's name returns their certification status and whether it is current.

State medical licence

The Texas Medical Board publishes a physician profile lookup showing licence status, the year of issue, the medical school attended, and any disciplinary action on record. This is the check most worth doing, because it covers conduct as well as qualification.

NPI number

The National Plan and Provider Enumeration System registry is a federal database listing every practising clinician's National Provider Identifier along with their declared specialty and practice address. It is the quickest way to confirm that a physician is who and where they say they are.

PLACEHOLDER: add Dr. Alam's Texas medical licence number and NPI here so that patients can search for them directly rather than by name.

Memberships and publications

Dr. Alam is a Fellow of the American College of Rheumatology, the professional organization for rheumatologists in the United States.

Dr. Alam has also co-authored published medical research, including work on anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA), Kikuchi-Fujimoto disease and IgG4-related sclerosing mesenteritis.

What to expect from the relationship

Rheumatology is unusual in medicine for how long the relationship lasts. Many of our patients will be seen two to four times a year for a decade or more, which changes what matters in a physician.

• You will see Dr. Alam at each visit, not whoever is on the rota
• You will be told what is being considered and why, including where the picture is uncertain
• You will be given the reasoning behind a treatment choice, not only the choice
• Disagreement is welcome. If a plan does not fit your life, that is relevant clinical information
• You will be told plainly when a treatment has failed, rather than the change being made quietly

It also means Dr. Alam gets to know what normal looks like for you specifically, which is more useful in this specialty than in almost any other. A degree of stiffness that would concern us in one patient is unchanged background for another, and only repeated observation distinguishes the two.

PLACEHOLDER: before launch, add Dr. Alam's Texas medical licence number and NPI number, confirm any languages spoken besides English, confirm hospital affiliations for this practice, and have Dr. Alam review and approve this page.