Where all your ID needs are met! Sort of.
I have a confession to make. I like fluroquinolones. I know. They’re broad spectrum, especially levofloxacin and moxifloxacin. They have pretty good bioavailability (almost 100%), and they cover pseudomonas (ciprofloxacin and levofloxacin) making them good PO stepdown therapy for severe pseudomonas bacteremia. Having said that, if you have spent any time in the internet you
In the past few years, there has been an increasing in the incidence of hypeviscous Klebsiella pneumoniae. This is typically caused by phenotypes associated with K1 and K2 capsule serotypes and is seen in southeast Asia and the classical pathology is that of a liver abscess (why this is I do not know). Recently, a
If I had to choose an enemy to my pretend superhero that enemy would be AIDS-related Kaposi Sarcoma (well, Staphylococcus Aureus but KS is a close second). I’ve seen several cases that did not end up in a good outcome during my training and I can recall only one where everything went well. In the
If I had to name an infection that gives people nightmares, besides COVID as of the time of writing this, would be Mucormycosis. These are moulds of the order Mucorales, which are comprised of multiple species, including Rhizopus spp, Mucor spp, and Lichtheimia spp (formerly of the genera Absidia and Mycocladus). Others include Rhizomucor spp,
Blood cultures are the gold standard for evaluating patients with suspected bacteremia. They are an indispensable tool in evaluating diseases such as infective endocarditis, septic shock, meningitis, and pneumonia. By far, it is relatively simple to interpret the results (its either positive or negative) though whether it represents a clinically relevant entity or contamination is
As it so happens, someone much smarter than me has already written on this topic, so check out Paul Sax’s post: https://blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-observations/index.php/the-curious-case-of-m184v-part-2-and-more/2019/09/08/ There is no doubt that anti-retroviral therapy has been one of the greatest accomplishments in HIV care. Nowadays, HIV is essentially a chronic disease that is easily managed with combined therapy, usually with
I think I have talked quite a bit about tuberculosis these past few posts. This is because it is difficult to diagnose in certain cases, it can infect virtually any organ, and it can become deadly once it infects any other organ outside of the lungs. Namely the CNS. Tuberculous meningitis is a deadly disease,
I think HIV is a very interesting virus. It has important historical, epidemiological, and societal implications and has had an impact in health care policy. The diagnosis of HIV now is actually relatively straight forward in most centers, but I wanted to take a step back and figure out the reasoning behind the algorithms that
Staphylococcus Aureus is a tough disease to treat, but luckily for MSSA we have pretty good antibiotics to treat this beast. The choice is usually between cefazolin, a first-generation cephalosporin, and Nafcillin, an anti-staphylococcal penicillin. My experience has been that cefazolin is usually the go to antibiotic for MSSA bacteremia, with nafcillin having a niche
Dr. Germophile 