Our results suggest that practicing specialists and fellowship programs should
avail themselves of opportunities for further education. Options mentioned by survey respondents included participating in the International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM) courses and meetings as well as those of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, by obtaining a LBH589 Certificate in Travel Health (CTH) through the ISTM, and through accessing the CDC Travelers’ Health website training (www.cdc.gov/travel) and informational tools. Malaria and travelers’ diarrhea were the travel-related diagnoses reported by the greatest number of respondents. Travel-related skin ailments and parasitic infections were also encountered by a high percentage of respondents. These are consistent with diagnoses reported through GeoSentinel.9,10 The number of respondents reporting travel-associated STIs was alarming. This problem has been recognized previously12 and consideration should be given to further investigation to explore better prevention strategies. Our results suggest that infectious disease experts should take detailed exposure histories and keep STIs in the differential diagnosis for ill-returning travelers. Our study
has several limitations. First, although our response rate was relatively high and the results represent physician responses from 48 different states, our results are not population-based and thus may not be generalizable to the entire US population and are not directly comparable to the results of GeoSentinal. Infectious disease physician members of the EIN may not be representative of all infectious click here disease clinicians practicing travel medicine. EIN membership represents about 15% of IDSA membership. Respondents with a greater interest in travel medicine may have been more likely to participate in the survey, potentially introducing a form of responder
and selection bias. Our survey method, which is not an audit, introduces the possibility of recall bias. Additionally, limiting our survey to infectious disease experts may introduce referral bias for both pre-travel and post-travel PRKD3 queries, as more severe or recalcitrant illness may have been encountered by these practitioners. Finally, the length of our survey was constrained by EIN policy and thus we were unable to explore many interesting topics including: diagnostic testing approaches, detailed traveler destination information, vaccination practices, and detailed background demographics concerning responding infection diseases specialists. Infectious disease clinicians are a valuable population to engage further in the study and practice of the unique specialty of travel medicine. The relatively recent requirements for travel medicine training during fellowship may need to be enhanced in light of more than one third of recent program graduates reporting inadequate training.
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