HIV AIDS

Here: Ted Rosen, MD, presents 5 tips about 5 skin disorders that you might not know.

A 38-year-old man presented with a 2-week history of mental status changes and impaired memory. He also had a rash on both hands and feet that had been getting worse for the past few months.

A 17-year-old sexually active young woman presented with sudden loss of vision in the left eye 2 weeks before presentation.

A 56-year-old man has been admitted on several prior occasions for left groin abcesses related to injection drug use.

During the past year, a 48-year-old man has had joint pain as well as this worsening rash on his hands. He is a construction worker, and he attributes the symptoms to his occupational exposure.

Here's a tip for dealing with patients who are hard of hearing and either don't have hearing aids or don't have them in at the time, usually while they are inpatients in the hospital. Take your stethoscope and let them wear the earpieces.

This HIV-positive, 48-year-old man presented with new-onset acne-like, pruritic lesions on his face. These erythematous painful papules had developed 2 months before presentation. The patient was taking antiretrovirals and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole for the HIV infection.

A 50-year-old man was brought to the emergency department (ED) after a witnessed syncopal event. He was awake but confused and unable to provide a history.

For 20 years, a lesion has been slowly growing on the penis of a 51-year-old man. He has noted bleeding and a foul-smelling discharge from the mass. Recently, the patient experienced a 30-lb weight loss. He has had 5 sex partners in his lifetime but has been monogamous for the past year.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a distinct disorder characterized by debilitating and often recurrent fatigue that lasts at least 6 months but more frequently lasts for longer periods. Patients with CFS experience overall physical, social, and mental impairments and may subsequently qualify for medical disability.

A 41-year-old woman presents to the emergency department with chest pain and dysphagia. Routine laboratory studies reveal profound neutropenia. She denies recent fever, chills, or weight loss.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has become a burgeoning epidemic. Patients with various stages of CKD initially seek care from their primary care physician; some of these patients sustain acute, reversible renal injuries as well.

A 37-year-old man presented to the emergency department with painful, burning, blistering skin lesions. The lesions started 3 days earlier on the face and spread to the trunk and extremities. Ten days before presentation, the patient had received a diagnosis of AIDS.

For 3 days, a 28-year-old woman with a history of polymyositis and possible dermatomyositis had fever, chills, and nonproductive cough. She complained of rash, joint pain, and progressive immobility because of severe muscle weakness. For the past 6 years, she had been taking prednisone (60 mg/d), hydroxychloroquine (200 mg bid), and tramadol (100 mg q6h prn for pain).

A 69-year-old man with stage II chronic kidney disease due to hypertension fell from his bicycle and presented to the emergency department (ED) with abrasions, ecchymoses, and a 3-cm laceration on his right leg. The patient was an avid cyclist. His wounds were cleaned and the laceration sutured. There were no fractures, and the patient was discharged home.

This year's influenza season is approaching fast. Although the World Health Organization officially declared an end to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in August, the H1N1 virus is still circulating and is likely to continue to cause serious disease in infants, young children, pregnant women, and other high-risk groups.

This year’s influenza season is approaching fast. Although the World Health Organization officially declared an end to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in August, the H1N1 virus is still circulating and is likely to continue to cause serious disease in infants, young children, pregnant women, and other high-risk groups.

A previously healthy 19-year-old woman presents with a sore throat that has become progressively more painful over the course of 1 week. She also has left-sided neck swelling, light-headedness, and intermittent headaches. She denies recent sexual activity.

These pruritic pustules had appeared on the lower back of a 45-year-old white man and progressively spread to the entire back over a month. He had recently completed chemotherapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Results of HIV testing were negative.

A 71-year-old African American man presented to the emergency department (ED) with chest pain, dyspnea, and hemoptysis. He had had a few ED visits for similar symptoms within the previous 4 weeks.

A39-year-old man with a history of AIDS and nonadherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) presented with frontal headache and scalp pain of 2 weeks' duration. These symptoms were accompanied by nausea, weight loss, and generalized weakness. Physical examination revealed a small, tender scalp lump, 2 × 2 cm over the left parietal area. The findings from the rest of the examination were unremarkable.

Early in his keynote address, James Orbinski, MD, Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto and one of the world’s leading scholars and scientists in global health, complimented the United States on the recent passage of its health care bill, a “seminal achievement” that he said brought the US “just a hair’s breadth away” from achieving universal health care.

How will your practice manage the coming “tsunami” of older patients as the baby boomers enter their golden years?

A group of 18 senators have proposed to reverse a policy that imposes a lifetime ban on donating blood for men who have had any gay sex since 1977. In writing to the FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, the lawmakers stressed that the science has dramatically changed since the ban was established in 1983 at the emergence of the HIV/AIDS crisis.1

As publicly funded health care payment programs have grown over decades because of demographic shifts and expansion of coverage, comparative effectiveness research (CER) has emerged to address value in health care. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2008 (ARRA) included $1.1 billion for CER initiatives, and the new health care legislation created the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, which will be funded with $500 million or more annually. In these efforts exist the promise to create informed decisions that will improve health care at both the individual and population levels.

Sporotrichosis is a fungal infection that typically results in cutaneous or lymphocutaneous disease, although other, more severe, life-threatening manifestations do occur. This article reviews updated treatment guidelines, which state that itraconazole has become the preferred therapy for most forms of infection. Amphotericin B remains the mainstay of treatment for severe cases, but lipid formulations are now preferred because of their more favorable toxicity profile. Also, fluconazole has been shown to be less effective than itraconazole and is no longer recommended except as an alternative for cutaneous and lymphocutaneous disease. [Drug Benefit Trends. 2010;22:49-52]

The US decision to freeze spending on HIV programs in several African countries has caused concern that some of the progress made in the global AIDS epidemic will be reversed.

As a screener and admissions committee member at our medical school (University of California School of Medicine at Davis), I am privileged to review the personal statements of many, many applicants who want to be doctors in spite of the recent hard times in our country that have led more than a few American physicians to believe that our profession is less valued and less desirable as a life work than it has been in the past.

The list of covered preventive services for Medicare beneficiaries has expanded to include screening for HIV infection, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This test will now be available to Medicare beneficiaries at increased risk for HIV infection, including women who are pregnant and any Medicare beneficiary of any age who requests testing.1

Physical changes that occur in aging skin (eg, dryness and thinning) can result in pruritus and cause patients to rub, scratch, and pick at their skin. These activities produce various dermatoses and reactive changes in the skin, such as postinflammatory pigmentary alteration. Lichen simplex chronicus (LSC) develops as a physiological cutaneous response to repetitive scratching or rubbing. First-line treatment consists of topical corticosteroids and application of ice to reduce the sensation of itching. Like LSC, prurigo nodularis results from rubbing and scratching the skin. Treatment is similar; however, intralesional corticosteroids and UV therapy play more of a role because prurigo nodularis is more intensely pruritic than LSC.