Initiating HIV/AIDS Therapy in Treatment-Naïve Patients What is your approach to early adoption of new HIV/AIDS regimens?
	Enlarged Version of Graphics Below	Dr. Wolfheiler (OC): I've heard some of the big, well-known HIV figures out there talk about whether or not it's still justified to be a cowboy when it comes to treating HIV. In the old days, you had to be. If you waited until the definitive study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a whole bunch of people died. You had to go on limited amounts of data, because people were dying, and I had to make quick decisions, and hope that you made them correctly. Now, for the most part, it's not as grim. We often have a lot more options available-options that have been well tested. Dr. Wolfheiler (OC): We've got to be careful, because we've been burned in the past; there were things that people jumped on based on relatively small studies, but studies that were presented at very good scientific conferences, and things that turned out to be wrong, and that we got burned on. Dr. Wolfheiler (OC): And so I think that there is still a place to be a cowboy out there, but it really is only justified if the risk to the patient of not doing something well tested is outweighed by the potential risk to patient of waiting. Dr. Wolfheiler (OC): I think you have to look at how critical it is for this particular patient to access this somewhat untried treatment at this given time, versus whether or not you and this patient can wait until there's more data that's been gathered and better analyzed.
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