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Infections Associated With Travel to the United States
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Dr. Fischer reports no financial relationships relevant to this field of study.
SOURCE: Stoney RJ, Esposito DH, Kozarsky P, et al. Infectious diseases acquired by international travelers visiting the USA. J Travel Med 2018;25:1-7.
Typically, travel medicine specialists are concerned with health risks to travelers leaving a home in a “developed” country and traveling to a low-resource country. However, nine of the top 10 international tourist destinations are in North America or Europe; the United States reported more than 77 million visits by international tourists in 2015 alone. Infections in travelers to the United States have not been studied extensively. Therefore, researchers participating in the GeoSentinel Network reviewed data about all nonmigrant, non-U.S.-resident international travelers who experienced an illness during or soon after a trip to the United States and who sought care in a GeoSentinel Network clinic from January 1997 through December 2016. The GeoSentinel Network includes 70 participating travel and tropical medicine clinics in 30 different countries and was created in 1995 as a collaboration between the CDC and the International Society of Travel Medicine. Data-sharing allows for dissemination about outbreaks of illnesses and facilitates research about travel-related diseases.
During the study period, there were 1,393 relevant diagnoses made in 1,222 travelers. The sick travelers had come from 63 different countries (more than half from Canada or Europe). Of the ill travelers, 82% had been traveling as tourists, and the median duration of the trip was 14 days (range, one day to seven years). Overall, 52% of travelers were female, and 9% were < 18 years of age. A total of 177 patients were seen for an illness at a GeoSentinel site in the United States during their trip. Of the ill patients, 14% had skin and soft tissue infections, 7% had an acute gastrointestinal illness, and 7% had...