Clostridium difficile is the most common cause of healthcare-associated infections, with as many as 500,000 cases occurring annually in the United States. Efforts to prevent transmission within hospitals typically focus on patients with symptomatic Clostridium difficile infection.
Investigators examined the effect of common infections such as urinary tract infections, sepsis, and pneumonia on >300,000 patients with ischemic stroke.
There is currently a global outbreak of disseminated Mycobacterium chimaera related to the widely used surgical device LivaNova 3T heater-cooler unit contamination.
A recent microbiological surveillance study found that >10% of linens tested positive for the fungi Mucorales at 20% of the hospitals included in the study.
Treatment strategies for late acute prosthetic joint infections should be individualized according to patients’ age, comorbidities, clinical presentation, and microorganism causing the infection.
Candidemia and Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) are both common healthcare-associated infections with overlapping risk factors, and almost 1 in 10 patients with candidemia are coinfected with CDI.
Time to blood culture positivity (TTP) provided reliable information on the risk for infective endocarditis (IE) in patients with Staphylococcus aureus bacteraemia.
An investigation into an outbreak of NDM-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae across 2 Belgian hospitals identified an outpatient clinic as the likely common site of transfer and highlights the importance of infection control measures in outpatient settings.
There is a correlation for documented penicillin allergy with increased risk of MRSA and C diff, which is mediated by increased use of β-lactam alternative antibiotics.
The rates of post-endoscopic infection within seven days vary from 1.1 per 1,000 procedures for screening colonoscopy to 3 per 1,000 procedures for osophagogastroduodenoscopies.
Although the Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome criteria have been used for decades to identify sepsis in patients with suspected infection, they have been re-evaluated in the Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock.
