Dr. Rensimer has board certifications in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, and special certifications in Tropical Medicine and Travel Medicine. These educational and training credentials and over 50,000 cases handled over 40 years since medical school graduation, along with several years working in Emergency Medicine and serving as Chief of Staff of a hospital with approximately 1,000 staff physicians, equip Dr. Rensimer to handle any type medical situation, especially in his areas of expertise, Infectious Diseases/Internal Medicine/Tropical Diseases. He has cultivated a practice that concentrates on complex and difficult to diagnose and manage cases which had often defied solution by others.

Our in-house pharmacy and support staff are experienced at rapid treatment plan approvals by insurers, such that we can often initiate same-day intravenous antibiotics outpatient when medically necessary and clinically safe, minimally disrupting the patient’s personal, work, or school life.

Chronic lung infection with relatives of the tuberculosis bacterium

Boils/Abscesses

Staphylococcal soft tissue infections

Cellulitis
Inflamed, tender soft tissue bacterial infection, often spreading progressively; sometimes not an infection, but often misdiagnosed and mistreated as one

Chronic Diarrhea

Difficult diagnostic challenge that can be due to a long list of causes: infection, intestinal malabsorption, intrinsic bowel disease, medications

Clostridium difficile Enterocolitis

Diarrhea due to toxin producing C. difficile, a bacterium induced to grow by prior antibiotics and increasingly resistant, dangerous, and difficult to treat

Endocarditis
Heart valve infection, a medically high-critically, high fatality risk diagnostic and treatment challenge requiring the highest level of expertise

Fever of Unknown Origin
Fever of at least 3 weeks’ duration that has defied the usual diagnostic tests and first and 2nd-line treatment approaches; perhaps the most challenging diagnostic dilemma in medicine with hundreds of possible causes, both infectious and non-infectious, and many life-threatening. Most often the cause is a fairly traditional problem presenting in an highly unorthodox way. FUO requires an expert diagnostician.

Foreign Body Infection
Joint Prostheses, Surgical Mesh, Traumatic FBs: Usually low-grade, subtle bacterial infections that cannot be resolved by antibiotics alone and which often require creative approaches for an optimal outcome

Hepatitis C
The most common cause of infection related liver failure, liver cancer, and liver transplantation in the U.S. Indications for hepatitis C screen testing: tattoos, illicit drug use (IV/snorting), body-piercings, transfused blood or blood products, birth from 1945-65

HIV/Aids
Chronic infection with Human Immune Deficiency Virus; normal life expectancy with expert care

Immune-Deficiency Infections
Opportunistic infections with unusual organisms exploiting weakened immune systems

Lyme Disease
Tick-bite associated infection due to Borrelia bacteria causing arthritis and other problems

Malaria
Parasite blood infection from tropical countries transmitted by mosquitoes

MRSA (Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus)
Serious infections or recurrent boils due to staph germs highly resistant to antibiotics; often needing IV antibiotics

Multi-Drug Resistant (MDR) Bacterial Infections
Increasingly frequent bacterial infections with resistance to all the usual antibiotics: E.coli, Acinetobacter, Klebsiella, etc.

Osteomyelitis
Bone infection

Pneumonia
Repeated bouts of pneumonia due to airway/lung disease dysfunction, aspiration of stomach contents, or immune deficiency

Prosthetic Device Infections

Implantable hardware or medical devices (hip prosthesis, orthopedic screws, spine rods, cardiac pacemakers and wires) sometimes become infected. We manage these problems.

Rabies Exposure
Management of risk of fatal rabies virus brain infection associated with certain animal bites or exposure

We are one of only 2 practices and 9 facilities  in or near Harris County with an in-house inventory of human rabies immunoglobulin (HRIG) and rabies vaccine and expertise in rabies evaluations, allowing timely initiation or continuation of post-exposure rabies preventive treatment. We routinely are referred cases from the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) in Atlanta and the Harris County Public Health/Animal Control

Sexually Transmitted Diseases
STDs such as syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, HIV

Sinusitis/Bronchitis (recurrent/persistent)
Sinus and/or airway inflammation and congestion unresponsive to routine medical and surgical approaches

Tuberculosis/ Atypical

Quantiferon, PPD positive test interpretation, including whether TB preventive medications are indicated or the “positive” tests are false positive

Lung infections particularly associated with nodular lung disease, bronchiectasis, and COPD

Urinary Tract Infection
Persistent or recurrent UTIs failing traditional treatment approaches

Wound Infections
Wounds failing to heal completely following surgery or trauma; often these wounds or ulcers fail to heal due to unusual infecting agents (fungus, atypical TB, Nocardia, actinomyces, etc.), inadequate blood supply, foreign bodies (soil, sutures, hardware), etc. Diabetic foot ulcers are in this category.