Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
>> Robert Striker, M.D.: And many of my patients, you know, they, I might be treating
for hepatitis C, or I might be treating them for *** or just a bacterial infection, but,
you know, you have to coordinate with all the other medical problems
that somebody has, and I have expertise.
I can ask my colleagues that are cardiologists about, well, you know,
what's going to be the impact of this drug on that drug.
Today I think there's about twenty different medications that, you know, the patient
and I will sit down and talk about together as to which ones fit them best.
There's now three different types of medications
that have three different anti-virals inside one pill, and there's a lot more flexibility
in terms of maybe you only have to take one pill once a day to really control the virus.
And so, you know, that makes treating *** much easier for me as a doctor, and more importantly,
it just makes it so much easier for patients that they can really achieve this.
They can stop the virus, and they can live a normal life.
Wow. They're taking their medications, and that's good for everybody.
A lot of our tests are done in house, and in our clinical labs,
and as an infectious disease doctor, you know, I can go down there, and I can say, well, OK.
This didn't, you know, we didn't find a diagnosis, but did it give us any kind of hint
as to what to do next, and I spent a lot of time actually working
with our clinical lab because I think they're great.
It sometimes takes several visits, a couple of different cultures, you know,
a lot of sleuthing, and a lot of times I don't have the answer the first time I see somebody,
but, you know, when you have that kind of lab backup a lot of times there's, you know,
additional steps that you can do.
Anybody can hand out a pill these days, but, you know, a lot of what we do is try
to help people understand, well, you know, what's going to happen after this.
And, you know, that's what I try to spend my time doing.