HIV and ID Observations

January 4th, 2016

A Riddle, the 2015 Clinical Trial of the Year, and a Guaranteed Laugh for All ID Doctors

Things quiet on this end recently from me due to various circumstances. but here are three ID-related (sort of) things worth sharing — enjoy if you haven’t seen them already. Let’s start with a riddle: What animal is responsible for the most human deaths a year? Readers of Bill Gates’ blog will think this is old news, but […]

---

December 26th, 2015

A Few Things We Were Talking About On Rounds …

Remember when people passed out papers of interesting clinical studies and relevant reviews? And how some doctors even had a special stamp they put in the upper right hand corner? OK, full confession — I did that. A lot. See evidence to the right. Haven’t used the thing in well over a decade, surprised I still have […]

---

December 19th, 2015

Part 2, Now The Good News: Why ID Will Survive as a Specialty

Part 1 of this post, which highlighted the primary reason for declining applications to ID fellowship programs, could come across as something of a downer. “Moping about it won’t get us anywhere,” someone said to me, and it’s true nobody likes a whiner. But my point was to acknowledge the issue, and find a way forward. It wasn’t […]

---

December 17th, 2015

A Certain Billionaire’s Arrest Prompts Universal Responses — and a Brilliantly Funny One, Too

Several words swiftly come to mind when hearing the news that Turing’s Martin Shkreli was arrested for security fraud. Karma. Just desserts. Kismet. Schadenfreude. Inevitable. But leave it to Andy Borowitz to get it just right: Ha, that’s perfect. Diana Olson from IDSA emailed me “Someone should make a movie …”, which is of course exactly right. What a script: […]

---

December 12th, 2015

The 2015 ID Fellowship Match “Historic Bad”: Part 1, Debating the Cause

This year’s ID fellowship match has just taken place, and the results were, ahem, not pretty. Part 1 will cover why we’re in this situation; in Part 2, I’ll offer some reasons for optimism, and even some solutions. According to data provided by NRMP, 117 of the 335 ID fellowship positions were unfilled. Dan Diekema from U of Iowa, […]

---

December 6th, 2015

Do Electronic Health Records Make You a Better (or Worse) Clinician?

Earlier this week, JAMA Internal Medicine published a study entitled, “Level of Computer Use in Clinical Encounters Associated with Patient Satisfaction”. A more descriptive title would have been “More Computer Use in Clinical Encounters Associated with Reduced Patient Satisfaction”, as here’s the take home point: High computer use by clinicians in safety-net clinics was associated with lower patient satisfaction […]

---

November 29th, 2015

Flu Vaccine Keeps Taking Hits, Still the Best We’ve Got — Don’t Stop “Belivin'” [sic]

For reasons understood only by the geniuses in Mountain View, CA, for some reason my Google news feed picked up this bit of “scientific” reporting: Let me allow the author, an unfortunately named “Clapway” (gonorrhea researcher?), to speak for him/herself: However, is the flu vaccine really worth it? The author of this article never takes it and […]

---

November 26th, 2015

Five (OK, Six) ID/HIV Things to be Grateful for this Holiday Season, 2015 Edition

Some quick ID/HIV gratitude items for 2015, done rapidly as we’re hosting a big meal later today. I wonder what that might be. New Ebola virus disease cases and deaths have dramatically declined. I write that sentence with some trepidation, as cases continue to occur sporadically, and this late relapse in a nurse was a chilling reminder of […]

---

November 22nd, 2015

Just Wondering: Quick ID Questions to Consider

Several quick ID queries, some of them answerable on the Google machine — but I’m not going there. Too busy laundering my white coat! What ever happened to amphotericin A? What’s the difference between a “serovar” and a “serotype”? Do dogs feel bad that Pasteurella multocida is more famous than Capnocytophaga canimorsus? Colistin resistance is bad — but how often does colistin actually work […]

---

November 18th, 2015

Are There Remaining Challenges in HCV Therapy?

Prompted by (yet more) spectacular HCV study results, I posted the following questions on Twitter: Is velpatasvir/sofosbuvir the endgame for HCV? And what will HCV researchers do now? https://t.co/vL2A9FOttR @NEJM — Paul Sax (@PaulSaxMD) November 18, 2015 To which I got this reply from one of our very energetic second-year ID fellows: @PaulSaxMD @NEJM what about coinfected patients, […]

---