{"id":919,"date":"2010-05-04T22:20:33","date_gmt":"2010-05-05T02:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/?p=919"},"modified":"2015-06-04T15:25:18","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T19:25:18","slug":"zoster-vaccine-underutilized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/zoster-vaccine-underutilized\/2010\/05\/04\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoster Vaccine Underutilized"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-920\" title=\"shingles\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2010\/05\/shingles1.jpg\" alt=\"shingles\" width=\"269\" height=\"202\" \/>From the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.annals.org\/content\/152\/9\/555.abstract\" target=\"_blank\">Annals of Internal Medicine:<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Eighty-eight percent of providers recommend herpes zoster vaccine and 41% strongly recommend it, compared with more than 90% who strongly recommend influenza and pneumococcal vaccines. For physicians in both specialties [Internal Medicine and Family Practice], the most frequently reported barriers to vaccination were financial.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From my admittedly biased perspective as an ID doctor, recommending the zoster vaccine is a no-brainer. \u00a0The cases of zoster I see are severe, and complicated, and people with post-herpetic neuralgia (who sometimes find their way erroneously to our clinic) are miserable.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m also biased in that I&#8217;m not in a private, independent practice, and hence not responsible for getting reimbursed for giving a vaccine with irregular insurance coverage and finicky storage requirements.<\/p>\n<p>So my guess is that were the vaccine universally covered (i.e., &#8220;free&#8221;), that there would be <em>much<\/em> broader uptake.<\/p>\n<p>After all, for most Americans over 60, which is more likely to prevent illness &#8212; the zoster vaccine or the tetanus booster?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Annals of Internal Medicine: Eighty-eight percent of providers recommend herpes zoster vaccine and 41% strongly recommend it, compared with more than 90% who strongly recommend influenza and pneumococcal vaccines. For physicians in both specialties [Internal Medicine and Family Practice], the most frequently reported barriers to vaccination were financial. From my admittedly biased perspective [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[985,1009,1010],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-infectious-diseases","category-patient-care","tag-vzv","tag-zoster","tag-zoster-vaccine"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/hiv-id-observations\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}