Michael James Burns MD

Dr. Burns is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UC Irvine Health. He is board-certified in Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases, and Geriatric Medicine has performed investigations on the usefulness of baseline tests upon hospital admission, hepatitis B immunity in paramedics, patient compliance with follow-up instructions, amebic liver abscess, elder abuse, and the seroprevalence of hepatitis B and HIV in trauma patients. He has also been involved in many trials of investigational antimicrobial agents, especially for patients with complicated intraabdominal infections and complicated skin and soft tissue infections. He has also investigated drug interactions and toxicity in geriatric emergency patients, and the role of the emergency department as the point of access to the health care system for the minority elderly. Other recent interests and projects involve the study of changing antimicrobial susceptibilities for community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections; novel antimicrobial resistance genes in Gram-negative bacteria; human monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of West Nile virus neuroinvasive disease; and new intravenous antiviral agents for severe influenza virus infections. He performed a study of the epidemiology and clinical manifestations of West Nile virus neuroinvasive disease in Orange County, California, for the large West Nile virus epidemic that occurred in Orange County in 2014.