Our division offers a full-time consultation service for patients admitted to St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The hospital houses 400 beds, including a state-of-the-art 40-bed pediatric intensive care unit, a 12-bed cardiac intensive care unit, and a large neonatal intensive care unit with over 130 beds. The facility also features dialysis/pheresis and infusion centers, two cardiac catheterization laboratories, an interventional radiology suite, and a busy emergency department with over 50,000 patient visits annually. Our division conducts over 800 inpatient consultations each year.
The hospital’s extensive oncology services and active transplantation programs in stem cell, heart, heart-lung, lung, kidney, and liver are supported by our specialized immunocompromised infectious diseases (ID) service.
Patients referred for the evaluation or management of various infectious diseases are seen in our general infectious diseases clinics. Urgent outpatient consultations can also be arranged. Conditions treated in the general infectious diseases clinics include:
- Bacterial infections involving bones, joints, lungs, lymph nodes, brain, skin and other sites
- Diagnostic dilemmas such as fever of unknown origin, recurrent infections or unexplained rashes
- Opportunistic infections in immunosuppressed patients, including those with acquired or congenital immunodeficiency or post-transplant
- Tick-transmitted and other vector-borne diseases
- Unusual infections caused by fungi, mycobacteria or drug-resistant pathogens
Additionally, the division provides care for infants and young children with possible or confirmed HIV infection in the Pediatric HIV Clinic, held on Monday afternoons at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. Adolescents with HIV infection are seen at The SPOT. These services are partially funded by a Ryan White Title IV grant, which supports regional pediatric HIV services. The pediatric HIV clinics handle nearly 400 patient visits per year, following over 100 patients with HIV infection and many more who were exposed to HIV at birth.