Letter from CME Chair, Jonathan Schapiro, MD

Dear Reader, 

Clinicians today are under growing pressure to see patients ever more quickly and efficiently. This pressure may often pose a barrier to provider-patient communication, which must remain a high priority of patient care. Employing some sort of educational intervention with patients about the topic of resistance, resistance testing, and the consequences of treatment failure makes sense to anyone who understands the importance of adherence in improving clinical outcomes in HIV-infected patients. Optimizing drug taking behavior and avoiding the selection of antiretroviral drug resistance should be viewed as a collaborative effort between patients and providers. Despite the current availability of a large variety of antiretrovirals in several different drug classes, preventing and minimizing the selection of drug resistance, and effectively dealing with resistance that has emerged, remains a major challenge to healthcare providers and patients. Our understanding of resistance has grown immensely through the collaborative effort of basic and clinical scientists, patients and clinicians—all working together to tackle this intricate and complicated field. Communicating simply and effectively about this great deal of knowledge and insight we have gained is not easy, but remains crucial to improved patient care. We hope this issue of ResistanceWATCH will facilitate a more effective approach to provider-patient communications in dealing with this important challenge.

Jonathan M. Schapiro, MD

Director HIV/AIDS, National Hemophilia Center, Israel

Adjunct Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine (VCF)

Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA