Articles Tagged With:
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Are There Definitive Clues?
How certain are you that the run of wide complex tachycardia that begins with beat #4 is ventricular tachycardia?
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Encephalitis Due to Powassan Virus
Powassan virus is transmitted by the same tick that carries the etiologic agent of Lyme disease and several other pathogens. The number of cases of encephalitis caused by this virus may be increasing in the endemic areas.
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Ready for Dengue in the United States?
Dengue is increasingly recognized in the southern United States. When recently surveyed, however, clinicians in Texas seemed incompletely prepared to understand and manage patients with dengue.
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Infective Endocarditis Trends and Outcomes
Using large databases from New York and California, investigators found the overall incidence of infective endocarditis remained stable between 1998 and 2013, and 90-day mortality declined. Changes were noted in pathogen etiology and patient characteristics over time.
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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.