Publications by authors named "Alberto Villamor"
Objectives: To evaluate the impact of specialized training for nurses on selective screening for undetected HIV infection in the emergency department.
Material And Methods: The intervention group was comprised of 6 emergency departments that had been participating in a screening program (the "Urgències VIHgila" project) for at least 3 months. Nurses on all shifts attended training sessions that emphasized understanding the circumstances that should lead to suspicion of unidentified HIV infection and the need to order serology.
Objective: To describe other reasons for requesting HIV serology in emergency departments (ED) other than the 6 defined in the SEMES-GESIDA consensus document (DC-SEMES-GESIDA) and to analyze whether it would be efficient to include any of them in the future.
Methods: Review of all HIV serologies performed during 2 years in 20 Catalan EDs. Serologies requested for reasons not defined by the DC-SEMES-GESIDA were grouped by common conditions, the prevalence (IC95%) of seropositivity for each condition was calculated, and those whose 95% confidence lower limit was >0.
Emergency department visits and HIV screening, clinical or universal scenarios?
Enferm Infecc Microbiol Clin (Engl Ed)
February 2024
Article Synopsis
- High rates of undiagnosed HIV infections persist in Western countries, highlighting missed opportunities for timely diagnosis as a critical issue in addressing the epidemic.
- A study was conducted in 34 Spanish emergency departments to evaluate the implementation of a targeted HIV testing strategy based on six specific medical conditions to improve early detection.
- Results showed a substantial increase in HIV testing rates from 0.42% to 0.75% of ED visits, with a significant rise in positive test rates, indicating the effectiveness of the intervention in identifying previously undiagnosed individuals.*
Objectives: To describe current attitudes toward screening for undiagnosed human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in Spanish hospital emergency departments (EDs). To describe staff willingness to implement screening protocols and the obstacles they foresee.
Material And Methods: Structured survey of all chiefs of hospital EDs seeing adults 24 hours per day within the Spanish national health system.
Article Synopsis
- The SEPHCAT study aimed to detail the characteristics of prehospital emergency services (SEPHs) in Catalonia, focusing on their organization, staffing, and training practices.
- A survey conducted with medical directors revealed the existence of 13 SEPHs (11 public and 2 private), which handled over 2.4 million calls and nearly 1 million emergencies in 2015, with a notable majority served by public services.
- Staffing included approximately 815 full-time positions, with a predominance of family and community medicine-trained physicians, and many staff members engaged in teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.