In an effort to increase the efficiency of STD clinical practice, an increasing number of clinics in the U.S. an abroad are employing express visit or fast track services, that is, testing for common sexually transmitted pathogens without a physical examination.
While data from several clinics have demonstrated that offering such services can result in significant savings in a time of dwindling STD prevention resources, concern has been raised that this practice could lead to missing STDs that can only be identified by physical examination.
In this month’s installment of the Real World of STD Prevention, the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases publishes a manuscript by Susan Tuddenham and Khalil Ghanem from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine on this topic and here to discuss the paper is Dr. Ghanem. Dr. Ghanem is an associate professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins ‘ Bayview Medical Center and the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. He is a well-known researcher in the field of STIs and, among other achievements, was the recipient of the 2009 American STD Association Young Investigator Award.
The podcast is this week's STDPO featured resource and can be played directly using the player on this page below or downloaded (23 MB).
The paper is available at no cost at this link:
Toward Enhancing Sexually Transmitted Infection Clinic Efficiency in an Era of Molecular Diagnostics: The Role of Physical Examination and Risk Stratification in Men
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