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Infection control practices and other "hospital factors" specific to individual institutions appear to be a greater influence on infection risk than a patient's severity of illness, researchers found.
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The program developed at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore that pushed catheter-related bloodstream infection rates to zero in some intensive care units is based on the following four overriding principles. Sara Cosgrove, MD, hospital epidemiologist, comments on each one as follows:
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Clostridium difficile diarrhea and colitis have now emerged as common nosocomial infections in hospitals throughout the developed world. Alarmingly, recent epidemiological studies in ambulatory settings have documented C. difficile infection in both adults and children who lack the usual risk factors of prior antibiotic use or hospitalization.
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Given its lack of benefit, possible harms, and expense, magnesium sulfate should not be used for tocolysis.
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RFA should be considered a first-line therapy even after the first episode of symptomatic AFL. There is a better long-term success rate, the same risk of subsequent AF, and fewer secondary effects.
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Among adults diagnosed with heart failure who had no prior statin use, incident statin use was independently associated with lower risks of death and hospitalization among patients with or without coronary heart disease.
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A meta-analysis of 10 studies of heparin used either for prophylaxis or for treatment suggests that venous thromboembolism related to heparin-induced thrombocytopenia occurs frequently in patients previously treated with unfractionated heparin, but uncommonly in those on low molecular weight heparin.
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The stroke and death rates at one and 6 months were lower in patients with symptomatic carotid stenosis (> 60%) treated with endarterectomy versus stenting.
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