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Managing cardiac arrhythmias is a unique and complex challenge in the primary care setting. The clinician must balance proper initial assessment, long-term management schemes and effective acute and chronic treatment approaches with appropriate triage to a cardiac specialist and/or an electrophysiologist. The treating clinician must be able to diagnose the arrhythmia (if possible), understand the risks to the patients, and plan an acceptable therapeutic strategy. Available treatment options are evolving rapidly.
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The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) continues to emphasize that the historic lack of compliance with hand hygiene practices by health care workers will no longer wash. Compliance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hand hygiene guidelines remains a JCAHO National Patient Safety Goal lucky No. 7, to be precise.
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Conceding that the jury still is out on the issue, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that infection control professionals screening health care workers for exposures to tuberculosis should consult with local, state, and regional TB control programs if they are considering switching from the traditional tuberculin skin test (TST) to the new QuantiFERON-TB Gold test (QFT-G).
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked with clinical partners in new "Prevention Epicenter" projects designed to find novel strategies for detection and prevention of post-surgical adverse events, bloodstream infections, Clostridium difficile infections, infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant organisms, and inappropriate antimicrobial use.
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A collaborative effort between the Michigan Health & Hospital Association and 77 state hospitals has dramatically lowered infection rates in intensive care units. Indeed, catheter-related bloodstream infections (CA-BSIs) have dropped to zero.
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Patients are five times more likely to die if they acquire an infection during hospitalization, according to data collected under Pennsylvania's infection rate disclosure law.
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Warning that hospitals with poor infection control programs could have federal funds cut, a United States congressman recently lambasted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's longstanding effort to fight hospital infections.
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This study ran from November 2000 to May 2002, recruited 611 patients from 58 centers predominantly from Europe, and set out to compare the efficacy and safety of these drugs for treating febrile, neutropenic patients with cancer and either proven or suspected infection due to Gram-positive bacteria in a prospective, blinded randomized controlled trial.
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A consumer survey indicates perspective patients are ready to be empowered with medical information and will use infection rate data in selecting a hospital system, an epidemiologist reports.
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In a high-containment laboratory along Clifton Road in Atlanta last summer, a mouse became the first living thing to inhale the 1918 pandemic influenza virus since it killed millions of people and vanished from the face of the earth. Predictably, it died.
