“In case of an emergency check your own pulse first”, that’s one of the rules of the House of God. More than 33.000 deaths due to AMR in Europe per year, as reported yesterday, definitely is an emergency. Therefore, I tried to disentangle what that means for my small country that so vividly tried to keep these superbugs out of the country. Continue reading
Year: 2018
ID Week 2018 as seen by an Infection Preventionist
Guest Blogger Barley Chironda (bio below) writes…
IDWeek was held this year from Oct 3 to 7, 2018 in beautiful San Francisco. This was my fourth year in a row attending; having first attended and blogged about my first experience here in 2014. The pressure to offer IDWeek attendees a stellar conference was palpable. A week before, the city of San Francisco had hosted Dream Force. Dream Force is one of the world’s largest tech conventions with over 150,000 attendees. I’m glad to say IDWeek did not disappoint; boasting it’s highest ever attendance of over 8,000 people from over 85 countries. Given its wide and diverse audience, there are many targeted streams that allow a range of topics.
Are alcohol gels doomed by resistant bacteria?
A high profile article was published earlier this year in Science Translational Medicine, suggesting that Enterococcus faecium can exhibit clinically relevant levels of tolerance to alcohol-based hand hygiene products. The article has generated a huge amount of press coverage and discussion amongst experts. So, I thought it was about time I gave the article a once over. My initial thought was this would be unhelpful extrapolation of low-level tolerance to alcohol gel that wouldn’t be meaningful in a clinical setting. But having read the paper, there’s genuine concern here. Overall though, if true resistance to alcohol gel was going to be a problem, I’m pretty sure it would have reared its ugly head already.
What about E. coli ST131 (part 2); is it foodborne?
Last November I blogged on E. coli ST131, frequently portrayed as a pandemic clone, combining hypervirulence, ciprofloxacin resistance and ESBL production. The question is whether the undeniable high prevalence of this bug among clinical isolates results from its virulence and antibiotic resistance or whether it is just a reflection of carriage prevalence in the general population, without any relationship to virulence or resistance. Two recently published studies try to shed new light on the debate; one bringing in chicken retail meat as the source…… Continue reading
The best IPC article of 2018: a blogoff with Brett Mitchell
In honour of Infection Prevention 2018, Brett Mitchell and I are having a blogoff so that you can choose the best IPC article of 2018. This post presents my case, Brett’s post (here) presents his case, and there’s a vote below so that you can choose. The results will be published next Monday morning at Infection Prevention 2018…
An endless one-sided confidence in Pip-tazo?
This weeks’ publication of the highly controversial results of the MERINO trial in JAMA caused quite a stir on social media. The paper has been viewed >50,000 times and the unexpected outcome has been challenged by many. But what was the conclusion in JAMA? “Among patients with E. coli or K. pneumoniae bloodstream infection (BSI) and ceftriaxone resistance, definitive treatment with piperacillin-tazobactam compared with meropenem did not result in a non-inferior 30-day mortality.” Not and in the same sentence, a doubled denial, is confusing. More important, as formulated, the study was inconclusive, which nobody seems to accept. We dived into the depths of the reporting and then tried to explain it. Continue reading
Hand hygiene edutainment via YouTube
We’re always seeking new and engaging ways to deliver IPC-related education. An interesting study in AJIC provides a useful framework to evaluate and assess the education content of YouTube videos aiming to deliver hand hygiene education.
A POET with a sledgehammer
Imagine, the look on the face of that ambitious PhD student, each day screening six hospitals for patients with S. aureus endocarditis, opening the NEJM and seeing that the Danes randomized 400 patients with Infective endocarditis (IE). And then his supervisor rubbing in that these 400 all underwent two extra transoesphageal echocardiograms for study purposes, that there were zero losses to follow-up and telling him how many samples of blood were collected to analyze antibiotic concentrations. Luckily, he was scheduled for our Journal club, which allowed him to apply the “trias scientifica”. Continue reading
Focusing on the role of nurses in environmental hygiene
I was asked to write a series of articles in the Nursing Times (along with my colleague and co-author Tracey Galletly) on the role of nurses in environmental hygiene*. Et voila:
Reflections on Infection Prevention and Control 