Paul E. Sax, MD is the Editor-in-Chief, Journal Watch HIV/AIDS Clinical Care, Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
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(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)In a previous post, we reviewed the various flavors of medication non-adherence, and concluded with this tantalizing line: Next up: An Adherence Intervention that Actually Works — But There’s a Catch Well here it is, just published online in JAMA Internal Medicine. Dr. Robert Gross (a long-time HIV adherence researcher from U Penn) and colleagues [...]
(12 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)The news about the cases of ciguatera fish poisoning in New York (NY Times here, MMWR here) reminded me of several unusual things about this form of “harmful algal bloom,” as it is so artfully called by the experts. Specifically, here are six: Symptoms are bizarre. It starts out like a standard case of gastroenteritis [...]
(8 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)I was doing a clerkship in Medicine way back in my third year of medical school, and had this memorable exchange with one of the hospital’s Distinguished Professors during a case presentation on morning rounds: Me (nervous): This is a 72-year-old man admitted with chest pain. He has a past medical history notable for a [...]
(6 votes, average: 4.83 out of 5)I’ve been working with the folks over at Clinical Care Options (in particular, Elaine Seeskin) on a program entitled, “So You Think You’re an HIV Expert”, and it was just released here. It’s a series of quick interactive case presentations, and thanks to some nifty programming and great questions submitted by my colleagues Drs. Daar, [...]
(5 votes, average: 4.80 out of 5)If you’re confused about the best way to diagnose C diff these days, welcome to the club. There are all kinds of tests out there, and no uniform approach between labs. Our lab actually does three tests — and will do a fourth (the classic cytotoxicity assay) if you request it. The result? Chaos, confusion, [...]
(8 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)OK, let’s imagine you’ve just gotten a call/email/text from one of your colleagues about Bell’s palsy; he/she is a busy PCP who periodically asks you very reasonable ID questions. I suspect it went something like this: COLLEAGUE: Hi Friendly ID Doctor, quick question — I have a patient with Bell’s palsy — wondering whether to [...]
(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)Some additional excellent questions from the course: For someone who has had 3 doses of hepatitis B vaccine but does not have the antibody, should we just go ahead and give another 3 shots? A: (Per vaccine guru Howard Heller): The guidelines say to just go ahead and give another 3 shots but if the [...]
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)We do a post-graduate course each year called “ID in Primary Care,” and it’s a great way for us to find out what people in outpatient primary care practice are thinking about from the ID perspective. I told the participants this year I’d post some of their most interesting questions on this site, with the hope [...]
(6 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)I was an English major in college, so when my acceptance to medical school (miraculously) arrived, several people gave me books written by doctors about their experience in the medical profession. “See,” these gifts implied, “Just because you’re going to medical school doesn’t mean you need to become a science drone. Doctors can write too!” [...]
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)With all the hoopla at last month’s International AIDS Conference about ending AIDS and curing AIDS and bringing us an AIDS-free generation, there was plenty of ink spilled on the topic. Ironically, the attention the meeting received was inversely proportional to its scientific content, which was actually fairly light on a content-per-day scale. The meeting [...]
