What is Infectious Diseases?
Infectiology is a specialty of medicine that focuses on studying, diagnosing and offering treatment to patients, regardless of their age, who suffer from acute or chronic infectious diseases. The professional who works in this specialty is called an infectologist. To achieve this professionalization, three years of specialization in internal medicine and later three more years in the subspecialty of infectology are required. This professional is also capable of performing medical tests and examinations such as:
- Specimen collection
- Culture studies
- Laboratory tasks that allow the isolation and identification of different microorganisms.
Infectiology offers great help to people living in geographic areas endemic to infectious diseases. The infectologist can make some preventive recommendations and is also in charge of practicing and assisting in the prevention of infectious diseases through vaccination in the elderly.
Infectiology offers great help to people who live in geographic areas endemic to infectious diseases.
What diseases does Infectiology treat?
Infectiologists are in charge of treating those patients with infectious diseases generated by any microorganism, whether it is a virus, bacteria, parasite, fungus or parallel infection by two or more types of diseases. The infectologist is also in charge of other diseases such as:
- AIDS
- Tuberculosis
- Disseminated infections,
- Infections by agents resistant to the usual antibiotics,
- Infections of prosthesis or foreign elements implanted in the organism.
- Infections in oncology patients undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatments.
It is necessary to explain that the infectologist also deals with the diagnosis and treatment of tropical diseases, a group of infectious diseases that are located in geographical areas such as the tropics and subtropics that present environmental conditions that favor the development of diseases such as: malaria, malaria, yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, schistosomiasis, cysticercosis, onchocerciasis, leishmaniasis, trypanosomiasis, amebiasis, among others.
When is it necessary to go to the infectologist?
In acute infectious diseases, if there are no complications and the patient has a good immune system, the general practitioner, family physician or internal medicine doctors can take charge. The infectologist comes into action when serious infectious diseases become acute in immunodeficient persons, with chronic diseases or extreme age. In other words, the infectologist should be visited when the patient is under the effects of infections caused by viruses, bacteria or parasites, and also when suffering from more serious pathologies such as: viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted diseases, toxoplasmosis, Chagas disease, malaria, among others.