Hospital Infection Control & Prevention
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Implementing the CDC Water Management Program
With the recent CMS action1 to begin enforcing Legionella controls in hospitals, infection preventionists can find a wealth of compliance resources in a newly updated CDC Water Management toolkit.2
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HCV: Is It Better to Test and Treat Than Try PEP?
Despite – or perhaps because of -- the incredible cure rates being achieved by new drugs for hepatitis C virus, experts say post-exposure prophylaxsis for exposed healthcare workers is not the path to pursue. Given a host of undermining variables, it is better to repeatedly test a worker who suffers a needlestick, ready to treat as soon as a seroconversion occurs, experts concur.
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For Everything There Is a Season – Including SSIs?
While it is way too early to advise patients to have elective surgery in the dead of winter, researchers are unraveling some telling indications that surgical site infections are much more likely to occur in the hottest months of the year.
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The Joint Commission Citing for Sterilization
Hospitals are continuing to run afoul of The Joint Commission accreditation inspectors for equipment that has been improperly sterilized or subjected to insufficient high-level disinfection.
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Think Outside of the [Recessed] Box
A common feature in hemodialysis units – recessed wall boxes to hook up water and other lines – can become a reservoir for pathogens if not subjected to routine cleaning and infection control measures, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigator reports.
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Are You Ready for Next Infectious Disease Event?
IPs and hospital epidemiologists who are not well-positioned within their organization and connected to key collaborators during routine operations will be severely challenged when an infectious disease emergency strikes, warns Stephen Weber, MD, an epidemiologist and chief medical officer at the University of Chicago.
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Heart of Darkness: Ebola Vaccine in Congo
While the world holds its breath, there are signs an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo may be fading back. However, given the devastation and some 11,000 deaths caused by the 2014 outbreak in West Africa, the last thing the World Health Organization is going to do is take this deadly hemorrhagic fever lightly.
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Feds Issue Call to Action on Legionella Outbreaks
Federal health officials report a striking surge in healthcare-associated Legionnaires’ disease, with the CMS underscoring the threat by ordering assessments of hospital water systems where the pathogen thrives.
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First Case of Hepatitis A Transmission by Transplant
Though hepatitis A virus (HAV) has spread via blood transfusion, the virus had never transmitted from a transplant patient. Now, through a circuitous chain of events, it has. Indeed, HAV spread from an organ donor to the transplant recipient, and then to three nurses providing post-transplant care, the CDC reports.1
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Drugs, Death, and Infectious Diseases
The intersection of the national opioid epidemic and infection control has reached some strange and critical crossroads, from drug-diverting healthcare workers infecting patients to addicted admissions infecting themselves by injecting through their IV lines. Now, we have another twist: the distinct possibility that infectious diseases could be masking some of the national death toll of opioids.