Publications by authors named "Gayle Balba"

The field of infectious diseases (ID) offers a rewarding career path and is widely viewed as an essential subspecialty in medicine. However, in recent years, these positive aspects have been overshadowed by concerns surrounding low fellowship match rates, undercompensation, and burnout. The Infectious Diseases Society of America Fellowship Training Program Directors Committee met in 2023, discussed the future of ID as a specialty, and sought to develop strategies to highlight the value and opportunities of ID for future generations, as well as underscore the importance of and provide tools for positive messaging to trainees about the subspecialty.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated telehealth adoption across disease cohorts of patients. For many patients, routine medical care was no longer an option, and others chose not to visit medical offices in order to minimize COVID-19 exposure. In this study, we take a comprehensive multidisease approach in studying the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health care usage and the adoption of telemedicine through the first 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Article Synopsis
  • The Infectious Diseases Society of America Training Program Directors Committee convened in October 2022 to address challenges in fellow education due to increased clinical demand and complexity in ID services.
  • The committee focused on setting goals and strategies to enhance training program culture while ensuring quality education both in inpatient settings and outpatient clinics.
  • This document summarizes the ideas discussed during the meeting and aims to provide a reference for training program directors in infectious diseases looking for guidance on these issues.
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The purpose of this study is to describe telehealth experiences and quality of HIV care provided to an urban population of people with HIV (PWH) in Washington, DC. We used self-reported survey data from a cohort of PWH in the DC Cohort longitudinal study linked to medical records (October 26, 2020-December 31, 2021). Analyses followed a mixed-methods approach, including prevalence estimates and multivariable logistic regression of telehealth use by demographic and HIV characteristics.

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Article Synopsis
  • * In 2018, the IDSA established the IDA&E Task Force to implement these priorities, while a 2021 meeting focused on best practices for training infectious disease fellows.
  • * The document highlights specific goals and strategies related to recruitment, clinical training, and faculty development, serving as a resource for ID training program directors.
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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected many providers, but its impact on Infectious Diseases (ID) fellows in the United States is largely undescribed. In this study, we discuss key issues that emerged from the first national ID Fellows Call with respect to the ID fellow's role during the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching/learning, and research.

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One of the many challenges that has befallen the Infectious Diseases and Graduate Medical Education communities during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is the maintenance of continued effective education and training of the future leaders of our field. With the remarkable speed and innovation that has characterized the responses to this pandemic, educators everywhere have adapted existing robust and safe learning environments to meet the needs of our learners. This paper will review distinct aspects of education and training of the Infectious Diseases fellows we believe the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted most, including mentoring, didactics, and wellness.

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The use of enteral feeding tubes to administer antiretroviral medications is necessary in certain patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. However, adequacy of drug exposures after these administration routes are largely unknown, making dosing recommendations and the attainment of viral suppression challenging in this patient population. This report describes a patient with advanced HIV infection and a complicated medical history including long-term intractable nausea/vomiting necessitating antiretroviral medication administration via a Roux-en-Y jejunostomy (J)-tube.

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Renal transplant recipients continue to have progressive kidney dysfunction and renal graft loss has been attributed to emerging opportunistic infections, specifically BK virus (BKV). BKV is postulated to be selected by the new potent immunosuppressive medications and to be an important factor in graft failure. The prevalence of BKV nephropathy (BKVN) is estimated to be 1% to 10% and renal allograft loss from BKVN has been estimated to occur in up to 50% of affected recipients.

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Background: From October 2001 to October 2002, we have observed a surprisingly high incidence of ocular syphilis in human immunodeficiency virus-positive (HIV+) patients receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy at our clinic.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective chart and patient database review.

Results: From 1997 to 2002, 455 patients in our clinic were screened for syphilis; 320 were screened from 2001 to 2002; 7.

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