VIDEO: Early treatment key in HIV care

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Looking at the patient first and making sure you have the data, knowing where their immune system is. Are they really devastated already? Are they early infection? What's their viral load? Are they pregnant? If they're pregnant, then I wanna pick something that's going to reduce their viral load very quickly and keep it down for the intent of the pregnancy. So looking at the patient, making sure you understand their wants, needs, and abilities, discussing that in this day and age, the eventuality of long-acting injectables, but realizing right now you have to have your virus undetectable before we can, by package, insert, put somebody on injectable.

So we discuss it, but making sure they understand the risks and benefits, pros and cons, but how important it is to get started as quickly as possible. As we know, people who start early in their diagnosis, within seven days, do better. They're more rapidly undetectable. They tend to stick with care and show up with their appointments more often. So our goal, my goal in my clinic and most providers who are doing this, the goal is rapid start, which is starting somebody within the first seven days of knowing their diagnosis. We have good alternatives, looking at side effects, looking at whether you have to have a food effect, whether they need to take it with or without food with.

Is that gonna be a difficult thing or not? Everybody's different, and they have different worries and concerns. And again, if somebody comes in and says, "I want drug Z as opposed to drug A," even though I may use A more often, if they think Z is what's gonna be best for them, and there's evidence that it works, then I'm gonna listen to them and give them what they think will work. They're gonna be much more likely to take it regularly that way.