Damian Krysan, PhD, MD
Division Director
The Division of Infectious Disease participates in all three components of the Stead Family Department of Pediatrics mission: patient care, research and education.
Our patient care services and responsibilities include:
Inpatient Infectious Disease Consultation
Our group primarily provides consultative care for children with infectious diseases admitted to the Stead Family Children’s hospital. We work with providers in all subspecialties to diagnose and manage complex primary and secondary infections.
Outpatient Infectious Disease Consultation
We have a focused outpatient clinic that provides after-discharge care for children with serious infections including management of outpatient intravenous antimicrobial therapy. In addition, we provide consultation services to referring providers for patients with infectious disease questions and conditions. For example, we evaluate and manage pre-departure vaccinations and prophylaxis for children who are traveling overseas.
Outpatient Pediatric Pre-Travel Consultation and Post-Travel Care
Children traveling internationally require unique preventative guidance and treatments to avoid infection with tropical diseases and those who return after travel with fever need prompt evaluation for severe infections, such as malaria. Pediatric infectious diseases providers have unique knowledge regarding these needs and infections and when appropriately involved can significantly improve the health and wellbeing of children. We offer travel medicine services to prepare children for international travel in addition to evaluation of returning travelers with concern for infection. Based on individual risk assessment of anticipated travelers, our team is able to communicate health risks and provide risk management measures, such as immunizations, malaria prophylaxis and other indicated medications.
Pediatric HIV
Our team manages HIV therapy for children and provides diagnostic evaluation of children exposed to HIV.
Stead Family Children’s Hospital Epidemiology and Antimicrobial Stewardship
Members of our faculty serve as the Medical Directors of the teams responsible for hospital epidemiology and antimicrobial stewardship in the Stead Family Children’s Hospital. In these capacities, they contribute to the development of systematic policies and guidelines for infectious disease prevention and diagnosis as well as for the judicious use of antimicrobial therapy.
Our division faculty is very active in basic science research related to infectious diseases. We currently have NIH-funded programs in:
- Antifungal drug discovery
- Fungal pathogenesis and host response
- The pathobiology herpes and varicella viruses
- The host response to mycobacterial infections
- Clinical trials for therapeutics and vaccines in children
The division also participates in the training and education of pediatric residents, medical students, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students through a wide range of educational activities both locally and nationally.