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The limited consideration for treating patients outside of hospitals and the lack of guidance to nonhospital health care providers is the "greatest weakness" of the federal government's pandemic influenza plan, a leading physician group charges.
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Infection control professionals are facing an unprecedented wave of legislative and regulatory activity as individual states and federal agencies move beyond demands for data disclosure and actually threaten to dictate clinical practice.
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Overall, clopidogrel plus aspirin was not significantly more effective than aspirin alone in reducing the rate of myocardial infarction, stroke, or death from cardiovascular disease.
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Antibody testing successfully identified 7 patients whose encephalitis was due to the free-living amoeba, Balamuthia mandrillaris, a pathogen that should be suspected in individuals with soil contact, high CSF protein, and mass-like or ring-enhancing brain lesions.
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Acute Q fever may progress to endocarditis in patients with clinically silent valvulopathy. Those at risk require either extended antibiotic prophylaxis or close serological follow-up. All patients with acute Q fever should undergo transthoracic echocardiography, or in some instances transesophageal echocardiography, to exclude occult valvular abnormalities.
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All of the currently available non-invasive techniques for carotid artery imaging give accurate results when there is a high-grade stenosis (70-99%), but contrast-enhanced MRA is slightly more sensitive.
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In this retrospective case-control study, carotid stenting with cerebral protection and carotid endarterectomy were not significantly different in early morbidity and mortality.
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Seventeen cases of community acquired pneumonia due to Staphylococcus aureus are described. Most were methicillin resistant and caused severe disease with high mortality.
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