Infectious Disease Emergencies

Infectious diseases in the mild to moderate form represent a bulk of office visits for internists and general practitioners. Often, when one of their patients develops a serious life-threatening infection, they are the first ones to manage the patients in the hospital. The hallmark of infectious disease emergencies is that with early and appropriate diagnosis and management, most of them are not just treatable, but curable. It is the first 48 hours of initial management that determines the further course and prognosis. Even when infectious disease specialists are available for consultation, the immediate management is rendered by the admitting physician. It is with this in mind that the editor of this issue requested our team to write the first article as a generalists’ view of infectious disease emergencies. We chose to start each organ system