Dr. Davis is one of San Francisco's finest house call specialist physicians and has been providing house calls and office visits to the Bay Area since 2005. His practice is built upon the philosophy that excellent customer service and excellent patient care go together. Dr. Davis works out of a charming 100-year-old Victorian home, and he believes that healing should begin when you walk in the door. While trained in modern medicine, Dr. Davis also has a deep appreciation of cultural anthropology, the natural sciences, and philosophy all of which he integrates with his medical practice. Dr. Davis received his MD from the University of Florida and completed his Family Practice residency at Lehigh Valley Family Practice. He has also lived, studied, and traveled abroad extensively, including for one year in Beijing, China, where he studied and practiced the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture.
JUSTIN C.K. DAVIS, M.D.: Hi! I'm Dr. Justin Davis and today I would like to tell you a little bit about syphilis. Now most people have heard of syphilis but probably a few people know what it actually is. Syphilis is a bacteria called Treponema palladium, which causes a disease, which is then known as syphilis. It's a sexually transmitted disease and if left untreated can cause very terrible symptoms eventually resulting in disfigurement or even death. Now, today in developed countries because we have much better treatment for it, the effects of chronic syphilis are much less common. However, back before the 1940's when penicillin was invented it was much more common and in fact historically many prominent historical figures had been infected or died from syphilis. Symptoms of syphilis can be divided into 4 stages: primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary syphilis. So, primary syphilis is when you first get syphilis symptoms and typically this will occur anywhere after being exposed to syphilis 10 to 90 days after the exposure. The initial symptoms tend to be a single, although sometimes it can be a few, but most commonly characterized by a single painless ulceration, usually around the area that's been infected. So, because this is a sexually transmitted disease this most often occurs around the genitals, although it can also be around, for example, the tongue, the lips, the mouth or other parts of the body. Typically, there are few other symptoms associated with this and after a week to a few weeks it will resolve even without treatment, however, that doesn't mean that the syphilis is actually gone, it just means the symptoms are gone. Next, you may experience secondary syphilis. Secondary syphilis will occur approximately 2 to 10 weeks after the primary syphilis has gotten better and this will represent a little bit differently. Probably the most classic presentation is when you have a rash, it can occur anywhere on your body even on the palms or the soles of the feet and the rash is typically penny-size, brownish to reddish lesions. You may also experience fever, chills, tiredness, muscle aches along with this. And these secondary symptoms of syphilis may come and go for up to a year but generally will also resolve spontaneously after a certain period of time. The next stage of syphilis called the latent stage means that the disease is not active at all. So in this stage there is no symptoms. Now, there is no telling how long this latent stage will last. Sometimes it will last even up to a lifetime and someone will no longer have symptoms at all with syphilis, but for some people after a period of months or typically years, may develop the next stage of syphilis known as tertiary syphilis. Now this is by far the worst and most difficult to treat stage of syphilis where it gets into the nervous system and sometimes some of the organs particularly the brain and the heart and begins to affect those. Often very seriously leading to all kinds of neurologic damage, heart damage, and can often even occur if untreated over time death. In the treatment of syphilis, if caught early in the primary or in the secondary stage is fairly simple with antibiotics. The antibiotic of choice is still an injectable form of penicillin but if you're allergic to penicillin, don't worry, there are other antibiotic choices. In the tertiary stages of syphilis, there is still treatment but it's much more difficult to treat and some of the advance neurologic symptoms may be irreversible. Now what can you do to prevent syphilis? Well, as it's a sexually transmitted disease, of course using safe-sex practices, meaning using condoms, knowing your partner and not having multiple partners is an excellent way of preventing syphilis. Also because it has these different stages, if you do have any symptoms that you think could be syphilis then make sure to have a doctor checked them immediately even if you don't have these symptoms currently, it's still a very easy blood test to diagnose syphilis. It's also important that if you're a mother to have good prenatal care because one to the test that we will do is a blood test to make that you don't have syphilis because you certainly don't want it transmitted it to your unborn fetus.
Member Comments