Infectious Disease
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Is it Worth it? Do “Healthy” Dietary Guidelines Lower the Risk of Heart Disease?
Recent controversy surrounds diet and its impact on cardiovascular disease (CVD). In this study, Reidlinger and her colleagues sought to assess diet by comparing the effects on vascular and lipid CVD risk factors of adhering to a diet consistent with United Kingdom (UK) dietary guidelines (DG group) to a traditional British diet (control group).
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Another Reason to Recommend Smoking Cessation
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia encountered in clinical practice, affecting an estimated 2.7 million individuals in the United States.1 The proportion of strokes attributable to AF increases strikingly from 1.5% at 50-59 years of age to 23.5% at 80-89 years of age.2 Approximately 15-20% of all strokes are due to AF. To predict the thromboembolic risk in the individual patient, risk models used most frequently are CHA2DS2-VASc and CHADS2 scores. The CHA2DS2-VASc score may be the better option since both the 2014 American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, Heart Rhythm Society AF guidelines, and the 2012 European Society of Cardiology AF guidelines prefer it when evaluating the individual thromboembolic risk associated with AF and to determine the risk:benefit ratio of antithrombotic therapy.3
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Culturing protocols devised for duodenoscopes to prevent CRE
Responding to a series of outbreaks of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) linked to duodenoscopes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed an interim protocol for culturing the devices before use to create a greater margin of safety for patients. But as others have noted, the approach is not foolproof and could be costly if facilities determine that they must purchase more scopes to adopt the protocol.
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CDC: Only one confirmed occupational HIV infection in a U.S. health care worker since 2000
In the 1980s when HIV infection was tantamount to a death sentence, health care workers bravely took care of the first epidemic waves of AIDs patients.
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Hospital goes high tech, improves hand hygiene
An Alabama hospital greatly improved hand hygiene compliance and significantly reduced health care associated infections (HAIs) after installing an automated hand-hygiene monitoring system.
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CDC, ECRI Institute devise culturing protocols for duodenoscopes to prevent CRE infection
Responding to a series of outbreaks of CRE (carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae) linked to duodenoscopes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed an interim protocol for culturing the devices before use to create a greater of margin of safety for patients.
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Hospitals moving on antibiotic stewardship, but outpatient settings have a more difficult task
The analogy between antibiotic resistance and climate change is an apt one in the sense that both require a local and a global response. Flagrant antibiotic prescribing in outpatient settings, for example can certainly undermine a judicious hospital response in the grand scheme of things. Similarly, what good is it if one country fights to save fading antibiotic efficacy but another nation passes out pills like candy. More on that later, but first the outpatient problem.
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Spore wars: C. difficile takes a staggering toll as top HAI
While CRE and other “superbugs” have been much in the headlines of late, Clostridium difficile has quietly become one of the most deadly pathogens in the country. Some 500,000 people are being infected annually in the U.S., with 29,000 patients dying within 30 days of the initial diagnosis of a C. diff infection (CDI). That is three times the number of people that have died of Ebola since the epic outbreak began in December of 2013.
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Reservoir Bugs: CRE in Long-term Acute Care Hospitals Threatens to Spread to Other Facilities
With a combination of severely ill patients, high antibiotic use, and lengths of stay measured in weeks, long-term acute care (LTAC) hospitals have been described as a perfect storm for emergence of multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs).
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Infectious Disease Alert Updates
Water Birth Death
Out, Damned Spore!