Tratamiento de VIH en la Atención Primaria

HIV treatment in primary care

Leslie G Ahlers, 21 Nov 2011 9:03 PM EST

Competing interests: None declared

Specialty: Family Medicine

I think HIV/AIDS can be treated in primary care in a similar way to other conditions for which patients periodically see specialists; when their disease process is stable or improving, returning to the specialists at the interval recommended by specialists, or when their disease is progressing and requires reassessment of their medication regimen.
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HIV treatment in primary care

Shiva Saboori, Greater Lawrence Family Health Center, 24 Nov 2011 7:48 AM EST

Competing interests: None declared

Specialty: Family Medicine

As an HIV Specialist who is also a Family Physician I am biased towards both worlds of HIV and primary care.
HIV by its nature of involving the whole body, the psyche, the family, and society has required such attention from HIV practitioners no matter their initial training. ID Physicians who have been doing HIV care over a long period of time appear a lot more primary care minded, if you will, and more aware of multiple interacting medical conditions, social issues affecting health and the diseases of the mind.
Primary care training is geared at onset to contemplate a complex and interacting image of the patient's various medical, social, and psychiatric issues. HIV care , with its multi-organ, multi-disease, psycho-socially involved nature fits into this primary care model easily.
The most basic part of a primary care practitioner 's training is to know when he/she does not know something, and when to ask and consult a colleague. Having access to an HIV savvy clinican should make it possible for all primary care clinicians to do a good job of caring for HIV infected pts.
Message:
1) Encourage more HIV training in Primary Care (via American Academy of HIV Medicine for example) so more can feel comfortable caring for HIV + patients and help their colleagues who are less familiar with HIV.
2) Get more primary care training for interested ID docs keeping in mind that some may have no interest in this, in which case they should collaborate with a primary care clinician they work closely with.
3) The job cannot be done without some merging of primary care and HIV knowledge.