{"id":5232,"date":"2014-06-15T12:29:52","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T16:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=5232"},"modified":"2021-04-05T13:30:42","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T17:30:42","slug":"poll-should-id-doctors-still-do-hiv-primary-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/poll-should-id-doctors-still-do-hiv-primary-care\/2014\/06\/15\/","title":{"rendered":"Poll: Should ID Doctors Still Do HIV Primary Care?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"My friend and colleague Ken Freedberg<\/a> is giving a talk soon at our regional IDSA meeting called, “Who Should Be Providing HIV Care?”<\/p>\n

He’s a very smart guy (except during the football playoffs, when he is possessed by evil forces), so maybe he’ll answer this\u00a0question that has strangely bedeviled our field for decades. But I’m sure his talk\u00a0will be interesting even if he can’t solve the problem.<\/p>\n

To recap a little history, jammed into this tiny paragraph: In the early days of the epidemic, some\u00a0(but importantly not all) ID specialists didn’t want much to do with\u00a0this highly charged, rapidly fatal disease of young and often stigmatized people. In response, other specialists and non-specialists got involved, forming the mixed blob of “HIV specialists” that we recognize today — a group of ID doctors, sure, but also internists, family practitioners, other medical subspecialists, nurse practitioners, PAs, etc.<\/p>\n

Periodically, people with opinions on these sorts of things have\u00a0weighed in on who provides the best<\/em> care to those with HIV, or a slightly different take on the question, who should actually be\u00a0doing it — especially the primary care part. A\u00a0consensus has emerged that someone with experience and interest in HIV<\/a> should be that person, regardless of training.<\/p>\n

But even though the question has remained the same, the context has completely changed.\u00a0Thinking back to when I saw my first outpatient with HIV in 1987,\u00a0I can define\u00a0roughly 4 eras:<\/p>\n

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  1. 1987-1995:<\/strong> \u00a0Prevention, diagnosis, and management of opportunistic infections. Palliative and hospice care. Lots of putting out fires, putting fingers in leaky dikes, and rearranging desk chairs on the Titanic. (How’s that for battling\u00a0metaphors). Plenty of \u00a0tragedy,<\/strong><\/a> with accompanying intense family meetings.<\/li>\n
  2. 1996-2000: \u00a0<\/strong> Combination therapy arrives, with highly complex and toxic\u00a0regimens using\u00a0early generation PIs and NRTIs: \u00a0ZDV, ddC, soft-gel saquinavir anyone? (That’s 27 pills\/day, for those counting at home.) How much water should you drink each day\u00a0to prevent indinavir-related kidney stones? Any downside to daily\u00a0Imodium or Lomotil use? Can anyone really chew a full dose of ddI?<\/li>\n
  3. 2001-2005: \u00a0<\/strong>A growing awareness of the long term toxicity of certain HIV therapies.\u00a0The “when to start” debate. Treatment interruptions of various flavors. Lots\u00a0of resistance testing for treatment-experienced patients, many of whom were perfectly adherent but had no active drugs. Crazy salvage regimens that included “double-boosted PIs” and “mega-HAART” (ugh).<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. 2006-today:<\/strong> \u00a0More and more (and MORE!) patients every year on suppressive\u00a0therapy. Clinical visits focus on prevention and screening, mostly\u00a0targeting\u00a0“non-communicable” comorbidities — heart disease, cancer, bone health, etc. If HIV therapy is discussed, it involves consideration of switching to simpler regimens, or whether HIV can be cured. (Can sometimes do the former; not the latter.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    During eras #’s 1-3, and the first few years of era #4, most ID doctors with HIV interest were\u00a0ideally suited to doing HIV primary care. We loved this stuff, and each step forward was more and more rewarding — thrilling, even. Plus there were papers — actual data — showing that the more experience you had, the better the outcome for your patient. This paper<\/a> was the most widely cited, back in Era #1. The lead author was (and is) a\u00a0primary care internist, but the message resonated with ID specialists, who in many\u00a0healthcare systems did\u00a0the most HIV care.<\/p>\n

    Generalists, meanwhile, became progressively estranged from HIV as the eras progressed. There was a seemingly\u00a0endless parade of new\u00a0agents, the codes and complexities of resistance testing were befuddling, and the mile-long\u00a0list\u00a0of drug-drug interactions loomed ominously. I remember one (excellent) internist telling me that he got about as much out of reading an HIV\u00a0resistance report as he did interpreting an EEG.<\/p>\n

    But how about today? An ambulatory practice once\u00a0dominated by\u00a0crisis management is now a comparably calm state of affairs, at least medically — the vast majority of people receiving care are virologically suppressed, and have been for some time. If 80% or so of patients\u00a0in\u00a0HIV care are stable, we can legitimately\u00a0ask the provocative question — does it make sense that\u00a0ID doctors still act as their\u00a0primary care providers?\u00a0<\/em>Shouldn’t\u00a0we move to the oncology model, where the specialists guide decisions about cancer treatments and complications, then the long term non-oncology follow-up of stable patients is done largely by generalists? Furthermore, aren’t generalists better at screening and prevention for non-ID issues than ID docs, who don’t focus on general medicine\u00a0during their subspecialty training?<\/p>\n

    Or to take the other side: Shouldn’t ID doctors\u00a0keep doing HIV primary care, since\u00a0we have a\u00a0nuanced view of HIV disease that didn’t come easy. The authors of these primary care guidelines<\/a>, for example, are mostly ID docs. Example of “nuanced view”: We know we can largely ignore the atorvastatin-boosted PI drug drug interaction (just start with a low dose), but the fluticasone-boosted PI one can be a real nightmare. And wouldn’t our patients we’ve followed all these years wonder why we were dropping them from our primary care?<\/p>\n

    Since I’m not sure of the answer here, please take the following poll — and feel free to note your further thoughts in the Comments section.<\/p>\n

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    Should ID doctors still do HIV primary care?<\/strong><\/p>