Articles Tagged With:
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Reservoir Bugs: CRE in Long-term Acute Care Hospitals Threatens to Spread to Other Facilities
With a combination of severely ill patients, high antibiotic use, and lengths of stay measured in weeks, long-term acute care (LTAC) hospitals have been described as a perfect storm for emergence of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs).
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Infectious Disease Alert Updates
Water Birth Death
Out, Damned Spore!
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Preventing Active Tuberculosis in Children
A three-month course of weekly rifapentine and isoniazid is safe and at least as effective as nine months of daily isoniazid in preventing tuberculosis in children aged 2 to 17 years.
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Steroids for Severe Community-Acquired Pneumonia: More Evidence or More Uncertainty?
A multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving patients with severe community-acquired pneumonia and evidence of high inflammation found less treatment failure in those who received steroids. However, in-hospital mortality did not differ between the groups.
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Acute Leukemia Patients Still Plagued by Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci
Fifteen (7%) of 214 patients hospitalized with newly diagnosed acute leukemia developed bacteremia due to vancomycin-resistant enterococci; 12 (80%) of the 15 had stool colonization with the organism.
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Fusobacterium as a Cause of Pharyngitis in Young Adults
Three hundred twelve students presenting to a university student health clinic with sore throat and 180 asymptomatic students had throat swabs taken and the samples were tested by PCR for Fusobacterium necrophorum, Mycoplasma pneumonia, group A streptococci, and group C/G streptococci. Fusobacterium necrophorum-positive pharyngitis occurs more frequently than group A streptococcal pharyngitis in this population and clinically resembles streptococcal pharyngitis.
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Seizures, Encephalopathy, and Vaccines — Evidence Fails to Support a Link
A comprehensive, independent review of 10 years of all cases in the United States of seizures and encephalopathy reported as linked to vaccination showed that approximately one-quarter of cases had evidence of a pre-existing neurologic abnormality. Among those who developed chronic epilepsy, many had clinical features suggesting genetically determined epilepsy, especially Dravet syndrome.
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Med mal reform not lowering healthcare costs
Two papers co-authored by a University of Illinois expert in the regulation and financing of healthcare conclude that tort reform has had relatively little impact on the U.S. healthcare system.
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Huge increase in hacking of computer systems
Hackers are stealing data from providers at an astounding rate, which reflects the fact that information from healthcare records are worth far more on the black market than credit card numbers.
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$8.5 million verdict is first for concierge medicine
A Palm Beach County, FL, jury recently returned an $8.5 million malpractice verdict against MDVIP, the nation’s largest concierge medicine practice company, which has 784 affiliated physicians in 41 states. The award is the first against MDVIP, and it is believed to be the first malpractice award against any concierge management firm.