by PATRICK LEJTENYI

What are you to do if you find yourself pissing fire and broken glass? Or discover weird, lumpy, cauliflower-like growths around your genitals? First off, see a doctor. Fast. Then you might want to check out a new Web site developed and launched today, Thursday, by the Montreal-based sexually transmitted disease specialists at Clinique L’Actuel, the first of its kind to address all and sundry STDs.

The site (www.cliniquelactuel.com) was conceived and written by the clinic’s doctors and designed by a company specializing in developing medical Web sites. According to Dr. Robert O’Brien, one its main creators, it’s geared towards both the general population and medical practitioners, especially those outside the main urban centres.

“The main problem is, there’s really not a lot out there for patients,” he says. “You’ll have a patient say, ‘I’ve been on five sites regarding herpes,’ and they’ll come in with plenty of misconceptions and panic. A lot of sites are anecdotal and not that reliable scientifically.”

He notes that there are only two decent Canadian sites currently online, one is Health Canada’s, the other www.sexualityandu.ca (in French, www.masexualite.ca). “But content-wise, they really aren’t complete,” he says. “They’re just kind of cursory summaries of what the diseases are.”

O’Brien says he first started working on the site last June, after noticing that most of the available literature is in the form of flyers that are soon outdated and don’t answer the questions patients often have after they discover they’ve acquired an STD. The site, however, is very detailed about every disease, and it needs to be.

“If you were in my office and I just told you that you have herpes, you won’t hear anything I say anymore,” he says. “Often, the reaction is so grave that there’s nothing that goes in one ear and stays there. So you get home and want to learn a bit more about it. The goal to having access to this site was that if you sat down and read the chapter about herpes, which is about seven pages, you’ll be able to walk away from that with answers to your questions.”

He adds that the site will perhaps prevent patient self-diagnosis, when patients will notice the symptoms and do their own research online only to come up with something incorrect. The site also offers graphic photos of just what syphilis, herpes, warts and what have you look like. It’s not pretty.

“Getting patients to agree to having themselves photographed isn’t always the easiest thing,” he says, “particularly on the moment. But as the site comes to completion and I’m able to show patients examples of pictures where I know they won’t be identified based on a picture of their genitals, it’s improving.” He says they have photos for each of their 18 chapters, but hopes to further expand the atlas as the site develops.

Still, he warns that the site has its limitations. “It’s not meant to replace the consultation, not in any way,” he says. “It’s really supposed to augment or complement it.”: