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Squaring off with the nation's leading infection prevention groups, health care worker unions and associations are urging the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to develop an infectious disease standard that would essentially regulate and enforce infection control programs in hospitals.
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More health care workers received the flu vaccine last season than ever before, but that has not eased the pressure to boost immunization rates.
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Many will have an opinion, yet the question in the headline cannot be definitively answered. I will not attempt to solve the debate, but let me try to shed a little light on it.
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Autochthonous transmission of dengue virus infection has been detected in Florida.
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In this before-and-after study of more than 275,000 patients admitted to a Swedish hospital before-and-after implementation of a medical emergency team, in-hospital cardiac arrests decreased and overall in-hospital mortality fell by 10% in the two years following the team's implementation.
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There is no difference in rates of treatment failure, death, or readmission for COPD between patients treated with oral or intravenous steroids for exacerbation of COPD, but the IV route may be associated with increased cost and length of stay.
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The etiology of blood culture-negative endocarditis was identified in 62.7% of 759 patients using combinations of serological, molecular, and histopathological assays. The majority of the agents not detected by conventional cultures were Coxiella burnetii (30%) and Bartonella spp. (11%), both diagnosed using serological tests, and Trophyrema whipplei, other unusual bacteria, and fungi making up the remainder. For 14% of patients, diagnosis required PCR testing on valve tissue removed during surgery (not in paraffin). The cause of disease could not be determined for 264 patients; 2% of patients had non-infectious endocarditis.
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This meta-analysis casts serious doubt on the ability of rapid response teams to significantly reduce hospital mortality.
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