An award-winning patient safety program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in McKeesport, PA, includes a focus on preventing troublesome Clostridium difficile infections.
New patient safety goals for 2005 by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations include preventing patient falls and avoiding potentially fatal mix-ups with similarly named drugs.
The latest evidence of the continuing emergence of a single predominant strain of community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) comes from Atlanta, where hospital-based investigators found the so-called USA 300 clone is causing 90% of incoming skin and soft tissue infections.
Physicians increasingly are aware of the need to provide prophylaxis against venous thrombosis for the medically ill patient in the hospital environment. This article attempts to separate the fact from fiction regarding VTE prophylaxis.
Merck announced on September 30th that it is voluntarily withdrawing rofecoxib (Vioxx) from the worldwide market.
Cockerill and colleagues examined the effects of the volume of blood, the number of consecutive blood culture specimens, and the incubation time on the recovery of pathogens from 37,568 blood cultures obtained from adults. The study was performed at the Rochester, MN Mayo Clinic from 1996 to 1997, and used the automated BACTEC 9240 instrument.
Bed Bugs Are Back; Can You Guess the Pathogen?; If It Was a Bear, It Would Have; More Bites.