HIV and ID Observations

September 25th, 2016

Is There a Hospitalist “Bounce-Back” to ID?

The New England Journal of Medicine recently published two outstanding pieces on hospitalists, and they had pretty much diametrically opposing perspectives. Both should be required reading for anyone practicing medicine, and indeed anyone who might know — or be — a patient in a U.S. hospital one day. In short, everyone. But since you may not have […]

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September 18th, 2016

Ten Years After Landmark HIV Testing Guidelines, How Are We Doing? Specifically in Emergency Departments?

In the late 1990s, a patient was admitted to our hospital with HIV-associated PCP. He had advanced AIDS, a CD4 cell count < 100, and was sick enough to require a temporary stay in our ICU. Those clinical details aren’t so remarkable — “late” diagnoses of HIV still happen, and happened even more back then. […]

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September 11th, 2016

Poll: More on Morgans, and Vote on Your Favorite Cartoon Caption

During my last post on the new HIV testing algorithm, I mentioned that I’d recently met a doctor named “Morgan” for the first time. I also provided actual data why this might be an unusual name for a doctor today, but, rarity notwithstanding, we should anticipate more examples of “Morgan —-, MD” soon. At the end […]

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September 4th, 2016

The Most Common Question About the New HIV Testing Algorithm, Answered

A primary care doctor in the Boston area recently emailed me this question: Hi Paul, A 28yo woman had a positive 4th gen +Ag/Ab assay, but a negative HIV-1/2 differentiation assay and negative HIV viral load. She had no signs of acute HIV, but is not using condoms with her partner, whose HIV status she doesn’t know. We repeated the […]

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