A new study shows some emergency room doctors miss the chance to diagnose patients who don’t know they have HIV.
“HIV testing is one of the most critical parts of the fight against HIV,” says Michael Lyons, lead author on the study. “Previous studies have shown that patients with undiagnosed HIV often visit health care settings, particularly emergency departments, before eventually receiving a diagnosis, but how to capitalize on these opportunities for earlier diagnosis remains unclear. We also do not fully understand how the frequency of missed opportunities differs between different emergency departments.”
Researchers reviewed the medical records of close to 300 people to see if an HIV diagnosis could have been given to patient sooner, at earlier appointments. It turns out researchers found missed opportunities occurred in 157 visits to an emergency room.
“Many, but not all, encounters included at least one indication for HIV testing. This suggests that only universal screening will identify all undiagnosed patients—but when that’s not feasible, physicians can improve overall detection by testing patients who they recognize as having increased risk of infection. All emergency rooms should be capable of HIV testing in these instances.”
Now researchers are trying to create a universal code for emergency rooms to follow so fewer testing opportunities are missed.
“Altogether there has been a lot of progress; there are still many challenges to expanding HIV testing. We’re trying to provide a road map to show where and how limited testing resources are best allocated and trying to motivate screening uptake by emergency physicians.”
Lyons says many hospitals have an HIV screening planning in place, and while it does help, it’s not enough.
“Even if an emergency room cannot test as frequently as we’d like, they can still work towards screening the population by providing whatever amount of testing is possible.”
