OPENING CEREMONY
A Strange New Disease In San Francisco
Saturday, May 19
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
John Luce, MD, emeritus professor of clinical medicine and anesthesia at the University of California, San Francisco and a specialist in pulmonary diseases and critical care medicine, will deliver the opening address at ATS 2012. Dr. Luce has cared for AIDS patients at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) since the earliest days of the epidemic. His address will focus on the evolution of the epidemic and the hospital’s response to it, with a focus on the pulmonary and critical care aspects of treatment.
The first hospital ward devoted exclusively to the care of AIDS patients opened at SFGH in 1983, and the hospital was also the first to have full-time AIDS specialists on staff. SFGH continues to attract clinicians with an interest in AIDS research.
The Chest Service at SFGH was involved early on in clinical and research collaborations with clinicians from other specialties, including infectious disease specialists and oncologists, who were also encountering a growing number of patients with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) and referring them to the Chest Service for evaluation. Dr. Luce and colleagues began using new techniques for diagnosing PCP, including bronchoalveolar lavage and sputum analysis. Infectious disease specialists demonstrated the effectiveness of pentamidine and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole for the treatment of PCP.
Dr. Luce’s research efforts at SFGH included studying the ICU outcomes of AIDS patients with severe PCP and the ethical and resource allocation issues raised by the AIDS epidemic. These efforts, Dr. Luce notes, stemmed in part from a fear that this new epidemic might overwhelm the limited medical and financial resources of SFGH.
“I am proud of how our division at SFGH, our hospital overall, and the city of San Francisco responded to the AIDS epidemic,” said Dr. Luce, “Those of us who happened to be at SFGH when the AIDS epidemic began and who were here during its evolution were influenced profoundly by it.”
