 |  | |
Initiating HIV/AIDS Therapy in Treatment-Naïve Patients
What is your final advice on treatment initiation?
Enlarged Version of Graphics Below
Dr. Kwakwa (OC): I think it's very important to help the patient know what to expect, what to potentially expect, and what to do in the instance that certain events do happen. I think it is very important to treat the patient as a partner in selecting the initial regimen, always remembering that we bring our expertise to the table as clinicians, and not to let the patient really select their own therapy based on what may be limited information.
Dr. Bellos (OC): In treatment-naïve patients, I think the most important considerations in a backbone are convenience, tolerability, and durability, and I think that when you use the drugs in the preferred HAART regimen, then in the naïve patient, there's not a real difference in terms of potency and durability, as long as the patient is adherent to the regimen. There are some subtle differences with respect to the nucleoside resistance patterns and sequencing that can make a difference in terms of how you long-term treat patients, or what your second and third goals are, and I think that we don't have to any longer sacrifice potency for convenience or tolerability, because I think now with our new fixed-dose combinations with the three that we have, we will have relatively comparable potency with relatively comparable durability, with ease of medication administration.
Dr. Wohlfeiler (OC): My advice to clinicians would be to really look at and listen to the patient in front of them. I think that we have a lot of options nowadays. And picking the right option for the patient involves looking at the patient, talking to the patient to find out what kind of regimen they're likely to adhere to, and incorporating that with the objective data that you've got in terms of viral load, CD4 count, clinical symptoms, that kind of thing.
I've always said that I think a lot of HIV is still the art of medicine. It really is looking at all these different factors and coming up with the right choice out of a lot of different options that you're always going to have.
|
|
Program Menu Last |