ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study of a 30-year-old female surgical doctor presented to a hospital emergency department at midnight, having sustained an injury while assisting in a complex vascular operation 30 minutes previously during her evening shift at the same hospital. It provides a discussion on clinical management, prevention, epidemiology, biology, and pathology of this case. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome was identified as a clinical entity in 1981 and subsequently linked to the virus that eventually came to be known as human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). A separate lentivirus with a similar clinical picture, called human immunodeficiency virus type 2, crossed from sooty mangabeys to humans on eight separate occasions in West Africa. HIV-1 is a bloodborne virus and transmission is by contact with the body fluids of an infected individual, although not all fluids have the same risk.
