Week One - Shenghao Tan

I am working with Dr. Mirella Salvatore from the infectious disease division. My research project will revolve around associations of COVID 19 patient clinical characteristics with their hostresponses throughout their hospitalization and recovery.

 
On the patient care side I have been following Dr. Ole Vielemeyer in ID consultation. A large part of the round is to discuss the choice of antibiotics, itsdosage and duration from lab results and examination reports. Some of the cases this week have been quite complicated and chronic; therefore, joint effort were required to provide adequate treatments. One patient had to battle both Crohn's disease and histoplasmosis, where the immunosuppressant and antibiotics used must be carefully considered to treat the histoplasma and maintain some immune system function, while not severing the GI tract. A part of medical care I learned that I haven't considered much of is the inpatient - outpatient transition: how is the treatments adjusted from the controlled and monitored hospital environment to at-home treatment with minimal monitoring and tests? What if the antibiotics provided at the hospital isn't available at the patients' area or country? Such must be carefully considered to continue treatment while minimally affect the patient's normal life.

We also swung by radiology quite a bit, particularly to check on the imaging history of the patients and development of the lesion, sometimes in months or even years. The diagnosis of infectious disease through CT and MRI isn't something I'm familiar with, however with the guidance of the radiologist I was able to comprehend just a bit regarding identification and signs of disease progression in the spine and the lungs.

Starting next week I will hopefully spend some time in the microbiology lab to learn about diagnostic methods (did a quick tour and saw some interesting devices and procedures. There was also a mycobacterium tuberculosis sample that we were able to observe under the microscope), as well as meeting with the clinical trial folks for a brief introduction. Since ID is usually not directly involved in surgery, I’m hoping to tag along with other participants to see a couple surgeries of various types.

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