HIV and ID Observations

October 29th, 2016

Are Antibiotics Useful for Small Skin Abscesses? Now There’s an Answer

Let’s start with the clinical controversy, one that’s been bouncing around Emergency Rooms, outpatient practices, postgraduate courses, and medical journals for years. Specifically, are antibiotics helpful for skin abscesses that are adequately drained? It’s still debated since of course most patients with this annoying problem will get better on their own provided the drainage is adequate. What do the antibiotics […]

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September 13th, 2013

Clindamycin vs. TMP/SMX for Soft Tissue Infections: A Clinical Trial That Needs Some Marketing

At ICAAC this week — the ID conference with the most inscrutable acronym out there — Loren Miller from UCLA presented a clinical trial on treatment of skin and soft tissue infections that has widespread clinical applications, yet may receive little if any attention. And why is that? Simply because the drugs (clindamycin and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole) have been off-patent […]

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June 15th, 2012

ID Learning Unit — The D Test

I suppose it’s not surprising that we’d follow-up the Etest with the D test, though perhaps if I were being alphabetical, the order would have been reversed. The D test is important, because it screens for a form of clindamycin resistance in MRSA that might otherwise not be detected — the “inducible” kind, which can be […]

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