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Although efforts to cut the overuse of antibiotics have made some headway in hospitals, the majority of prescriptions are written by community-based clinicians often for pediatric patients with common ailments.
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Preventing bloodstream infections among the most costly and potentially fatal patient complications provides a benefit so powerful that one is tempted to dismiss the risk.
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Influenza poses a rare but real risk of fatal infection in otherwise healthy children, a Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention epidemiologist reports.
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In findings that may set a new standard of care in intensive care units, researchers demonstrated in a large-scale trial that a combination of daily chlorhexidine baths and a five-day regimen of nasal mupirocin reduced bloodstream infections (BSIs) for all pathogens by a staggering 44%.
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Martin A. Makary, MD, MPH, an associate professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD is the author of the recently published book "Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care."
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No specific infection control breach has been identified in the death earlier this year of a 25-year-old research laboratory associate at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco.
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Researchers are finding that a specific spectrum of ultraviolet light kills drug-resistant bacteria and other problem pathogens on common environmental surfaces, including door handles and bedside tables and rails in hospital rooms.
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As the lines blur between patient safety and worker safety, employee health professionals including those "two-hat" infection preventionists with dual responsibilities can expect much more scrutiny from regulators who traditionally focused on patient care.
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Memo to the Centers from Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) from two leading surgeons on the literal cutting edge of infection prevention in the OR: Hospitals and federal regulators should encourage the use of newer and safer types of surgery and more transparency with patients on procedure options and possible outcomes. That would do more to reduce surgical site infection (SSI) rates than inspections by CMS and other government regulators.
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The Veterans Health Administration has developed best practices in handling large-scale epidemiologic look-back investigations, including finding a way to explain a potential exposure of blood-borne viruses to a large number of people who likely were not impacted by the incident.
