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With 100,000 infected patients a year leaving hospitals under a sheet, we are way past the day when cultural barriers and awkwardness gave patients pause about reminding health care workers to wash their hands. Indeed, patients and their advocates must remind caregivers to wash their hands with an irritating consistency.
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Even in a nonoutbreak settings, Clostridium difficileassociated disease (CDAD) had a statistically significant negative impact on patient illness and death, and the impact of CDAD persisted beyond hospital discharge, researchers found.
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigators considered several other theories before concluding that improper needle practices and reuse of single-dose vials of propofol likely caused a recent HCV outbreak among patients at a Las Vegas endoscopy clinic.
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An aging population and the emergence of a hypervirulent strain are combining to make Clostridium difficile disease a killer. Hospitalizations and deaths from C. diff-associated disease (CDAD) are on the rise in the United States.
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For the first time, a newly proposed guidance puts a number and a cost to the respirators needed to protect health care workers during an influenza pandemic: 480 respirators at a cost of about $240 to protect a single employee, or a single reusable elastomeric respirator with three filters at a cost of $40 per employee.
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A disturbing number of cases of pneumonia caused by staph infections resulted in death among young, otherwise healthy patients during the 2006-2007 flu season, with more than three-quarters caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), researchers found.
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With a matching vaccine not expected to be available for at least five months if and when pandemic influenza hits, hospitals should stockpile flu antivirals to protect their health care workers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommends in recently issued draft guidance.
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If hospitals nationwide followed draft recommendations to stockpile flu antivirals to protect health care workers against an influenza pandemic more than 100 million antiviral regimens would be required, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
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The much-feared widespread emergence of vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus has not occurred, with true VRSA still a rare phenomenon. But perhaps the path to this milestone toward a post-antibiotic era will occur in more incremental steps.
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A fascinating, philosophical exchange among some of the nation's leading health care epidemiologists recently came down to the value of zero.
