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The staggering burden of heath care associated infections (HAIs) in lives and dollars is "unacceptable," but changing the status quo is difficult because the health care system is woefully skewed toward treatment rather than prevention, Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said recently in Atlanta at the opening of the Fifth Decennial International Conference on HAIs.
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At DuBois (PA) Regional Medical Center, employees were failing N95 fit tests in alarming numbers. In the cardiology department, about 46% of employees failed fit-tests even after trying a variety of models and sizes. Things weren't much better in anesthesia (35%), cardiovascular ICU (34%), or the emergency department (26%).
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At the Infected Health Care Worker Program in the Minnesota Department of Health, nurse specialist Stephen Moore, RN, MPH, has a case load of 150 health care workers who have HIV, hepatitis B or C. Some are administrators not involved in patient care. Only about 20 are nurses, doctors, or dentists who perform invasive procedures that are considered exposure-prone according to a 1991 guideline from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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According to a new guideline from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the following recommendations apply to health care workers infected with HIV or hepatitis B or C
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New Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) guidelines for health care workers infected with bloodborne viruses include the following procedures at greatest risk of transmission to patients.
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Do some health care workers infected with HIV or hepatitis B or C pose a risk to their patients? Should they be restricted from performing exposure-prone procedures?
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The authors reviewed 12 articles representing 13 prospective studies searching for a link between vitamin B6 consumption or blood pyridoxal 5-phosphate (PLP, the main active coenzyme form of B6) and lower rates of colorectal cancer, finding a linear inverse relationship (relative risk 0.52) between blood PLP and colorectal cancer risk.
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The promising results of this study suggest that timely supplementation with vitamin D3 may help prevent seasonal influenza A, though not influenza B, in school-aged children. A side finding was that children with asthma taking vitamin D3 experienced fewer exacerbations, though not a lesser rate of influenza A infection. I hope this trial will be replicated, and with measurement of 25-OH D levels, in both children and adults, to help tease out the role of vitamin D in flu prevention.