Articles Tagged With: infection
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Clostridium difficile Infection — Back to the Future
SYNOPSIS: This study provides strong evidence that the diagnosis of Clostridium difficile infection (as opposed to colonization) should be made on the basis of evidence of toxin production, not the mere presence of the organism as detected by glutamate dehydrogenase testing or the presence of toxin genes.
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ID Grand Rounds — Stanford University
A 69-year-old male with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant with a space-occupying lesion of the central nervous system.
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Chagas — Multifaceted Approach Needed
Prolonged recurrent exposure to Trypanosoma cruzi leads to an increased risk of inflammatory cardiomyopathy, but to decreased congenital transmission of T. cruzi. As housing and vector control improve, concurrent attention to early treatment is needed in order to reduce both cardiomyopathy and congenital infection.
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When Profiling Is a Good Thing: Distinguishing Bacterial from Viral Infection
Transcriptional analysis outperformed serum procalcitonin in distinguishing viral from bacterial infections.
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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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Failure to diagnose infection causes toddler death and yields verdict of $1.72 million
Plaintiffs’ 3-month-old daughter was taken to the hospital with a high fever and elevated pulse rate. The ED physician diagnosed an ear infection and discharged the infant with a prescription for antibiotics. Days later she was diagnosed with pneumococcal meningitis, hypoxic brain injury, and hydrocephalus. She lived for 20 more months. Plaintiffs sued the hospital and the ED physician, and they won a verdict of joint and several liability for $1.7 million.
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Failure to treat bacterial infection from routine injection results in $2.3M verdict
Physicians and healthcare providers must recognize that HAIs are common, and when they are treating a patient who recently has received healthcare services or undergone a procedure involving an injection, extra precautions should be taken to rule out the possibility of an infection.
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Lumbar Spinal Surgery Versus Conservative Treatment
Surgery for a herniated lumbar disc with sciatica does not have a better long-term result than conservative therapy. -
Prognosis of Normal Coronary Arteries
Up to 20% of patients undergoing coronary angiography have normal arteries or mild luminal irregularities. -
Don't let emergency patients be harmed by unsafe storage of meds
To control a patient's blood pressure, an ED nurse began an infusion with a bag of dopamine from an automated dispensing cabinet (ADC), but the nurse failed to realize that instead of the usual concentration of 400 mg/250 mL, the bag contained 400 mg/500 mL that had accidentally been stocked there.