**Preface to "Rheumatic Diseases: Pathophysiology, Targeted Therapy, Focus on Vascular and Pulmonary Manifestations"**

This book aims to summarize the latest advances in the rheumatic diseases, particularly regarding their pathophysiology and targeted therapy, with a focus on the recent efforts of vascular and pulmonary manifestations in order to anticipate new and future directions of these research topics.

Rheumatic diseases represent a heterogeneous group of severe autoimmune disorders. The present Special Issue aims to provide an overview of the diversity and complexity of vascular and pulmonary manifestations of rheumatic diseases and to highlight gaps in our knowledge of how to effectively manage them. Despite their significant morbidity, we have a limited understanding of their pathogenesis. The eleven published articles reported here underline the complexity of rheumatic diseases and the difficulty of managing them. The manuscripts provide an overview of the pathophysiology and current management approach of these disorders, highlighting tools that assist with diagnosis, risk stratification, and therapy.

A significant number of articles have reported innovative and effective treatments for the most frequent and debilitating complications of rheumatic diseases. The book emphasizes the importance of multidisciplinary teams using the skills of laboratory researchers, clinicians, radiologists, and pathologists.

Furthermore, recent findings are presented and discussed, highlighting strategies to combat worsening symptoms of rheumatic diseases. The research described in this book provide an extremely useful example of the results achieved in the field of anti-rheumatic drug development. Detailed information on new breakthroughs can be found in this book. We strongly encourage a wide group of readers to explore the book that we are presenting for inspiration to develop new approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of rheumatic diseases.

We are grateful to all the authors for their contributions. We would also like to thank all reviewers for their help with evaluating manuscripts. We thank MDPI for their decision to publish this book and Ms. Fendy Fan for her kind assistance and technical support.
