HIV and ID Observations

July 20th, 2013

There’s No US News & World Report Infectious Diseases Ranking — Is That A Good Thing?

As the internet burns through traditional print media, decimating anything paper in its path, several odd things have happened beyond simply putting those newspapers, magazines, and journals out of business. For example, Gourmet was subsumed into Bon Appetit — who could have predicted that? PLoS One and its ilk were born. And what about the hard-copy […]

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July 3rd, 2013

First Year ID Fellows — What Do They Learn, and What Do They Hate?

In the weird calendar of academic medical centers, July 1 is the “official” first day of school. In our ID program, however, we shifted it to July 5 a few years ago to avoid the interruption of the July 4 holiday at the beginning of the year. On July 3 — today — our incoming first-year […]

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April 25th, 2013

In Praise of the Diversity of Being an Infectious Diseases Specialist

I have a friend who is a thoracic surgeon. Imagine his daily agenda: 5:00 AM:  Oops, slept late. 5:30 AM:  Drive to hospital; not much traffic. 6:00 AM:  Round on inpatients. They’re all doing great! Wonder why they’re not more talkative. 6:15 AM:  Coffee, gossip with other surgeons. 7:00 AM:  Get in scrubs, prepare for first case. […]

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October 15th, 2012

ID Doctors are Clueless about Treating Helicobacter

Every so often, we’ll get a referral from a gastroenterologist about a refractory case of Helicobacter pylori. Usually the patient has been treated multiple times, and still has symptoms and a positive test. Naturally a referral to a specialist in Infectious Diseases seems warranted. But the reality is that this is like the IV nurse contacting the […]

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April 4th, 2012

Infectious Diseases Specialists Take the Best Medical Histories

In an era where control-c followed by control-v — that’s cut and paste, for those of you who don’t use keyboard shortcuts — is the prime method by which most clinicians write their medical notes, I’d like to come right out and brag that ID doctors take the best medical histories. You could argue (as I […]

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March 4th, 2012

Be Careful What You “Catch”

On the eve of the 19th Retroconference, or “CROI” — and I’m headed to Seattle right this moment — two baseball players have intersected with the world of Infectious Diseases. Ike Davis of the Mets has Coccidioidomycosis (Valley Fever). And Ryan Howard of the Phillies has an infection after achilles tendon surgery. Bottom line, it’s quite obvious that Bud […]

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January 18th, 2012

ID Case Conference Discussant Types

We specialists in Infectious Diseases love case conferences — especially those where the case is presented as an “unknown”, and we try to figure out the diagnosis from the history. I suppose this isn’t very surprising, since ID cases in general are already among the most interesting in all of medicine. Those that are case-conference-worthy are […]

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May 4th, 2011

How Much Do ID/HIV Doctors Get Paid?

A long time ago, I was very close to becoming a Cardiologist. Really. Even though my fascination with ID and microbiology started in medical school — and believe me, not much fascinated me in medical school — the fact that all the top residents in my program were going into Cardiology made me feel that somehow […]

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October 22nd, 2010

How to Figure Out the Length of Antibiotic Therapy

One thing we ID doctors know — that other clinicians simply don’t — is how long to treat a patient with antibiotics. I was reminded of this special power by these recent events: An excellent fellow from the hospital’s Critical Care program rotated through our division recently.  When asked about what she wanted learn from the elective, the […]

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January 1st, 2010

Top 10 Stories of the Year

No end-of-year wrap-up is complete without a “Top 10” list, and Journal Watch: AIDS Clinical Care is no exception. This year we did two lists, one chosen by the Editors, the other a numeric tally of what’s read on line by the Readers. The “When to start” issue was the top story from the Editors. The big […]

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