An ongoing dialogue on HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases,
April 22nd, 2019
Two New Trials of Combination Therapy for MRSA Bacteremia Answer Some Questions — and Raise Several New Ones
Every clinically active ID specialist, hospitalist, and cardiologist realizes that treatment of bacteremia due to methicillin-resistant Staph aureus (MRSA) is no easy task. In fact, it’s a problem so difficult that persistent bacteremia due to MRSA deserved highlighting here as an “Unanswerable Problem in Infectious Diseases”. I wrote that over 5 years ago, and you know what? […]
August 20th, 2017
Two Quick Thoughts Inspired by Inpatient ID Consults, and An Inspirational Baseball Poster
A couple of quick thoughts for those of us doing inpatient care these days: Thought One: Is daptomycin now preferred over vancomycin in most clinical settings? It’s taken a while, but we’re getting there — close to that Gladwelllian “tipping point”. Allow this recap of vancomycin’s problems: The growing recognition that higher drug levels — the levels we […]
March 14th, 2010
MRSA Bacteremia Question Redux — and the “Answer”
As noted here, I recently had to answer a question on management of MRSA bacteremia as part of an every-10-year cycle of test-taking. (For more on that joyous process, read this interesting debate here in the New England Journal of Medicine.) The question seemed to have no obvious right answer, so I did what one is explicitly allowed to […]
March 5th, 2010
Test Question on MRSA Bacteremia
I just happened to be taking a test the other day — something I do for fun every now and then, say every 10 years or so — and I came across this question (slightly condensed/changed to protect the innocent): Man with history of IDU admitted with fever, has bacteremia due to MRSA (MIC 2 mcg/mL […]