In this weeks’ PhD journal club Darren Troeman discussed the paper “Effect of a multifaceted educational intervention for anti-infectious measures on sepsis mortality: a cluster randomized trial”. The plan was to improve compliance with guidelines, thereby reducing time before start of antimicrobial therapy (AT) which should reduce 28-day mortality. The intervention was compared to conventional medical education. Disappointingly, the trial provided more lessons for trialists than for healthcare providers. Continue reading
Science
Publish or perish
Our careers (at least partly) depend on our publications. The more, the better and to suit our needs we have a journal for any kind of publication. Sometimes, you read something and you may think “Hey, I have seen that before”. If the new study than confirms a previous finding, we apparently have a reproducible fact, which increases the likelihood that it is indeed true. Here is an example. Or not? Continue reading
How to predict ESBL (part 4)
Two months ago I provided an update on the ESBL-predict study that Tim Deelen from our group coordinates. In short: Every hospital in the world can participate, through a user-friendly electronic CRF (in a secured environment), in the validation of 2 scoring systems to predict that sepsis is caused by ESBL-producing bacteria. Only relevant for those of us that are not yet ready to start meropenem/amikacine for every patient that starts with antibiotics! This tool may help, …. if reliable. We passed the 3,000 episodes! Here is a short update and info for those that want to join. Continue reading
On the effects of antibiotic stewardship: I met a analysis
Yet another meta-analysis telling us that we are doing something very valuable: antibiotic stewardship (AS). Nobody wants to (or should) question that good AS is important for our patients, just as hand hygiene, being sober when working and following the latest professional developments. How nice would it be if we could reliably quantify the effects of our good practice. One study is no study (say those that usually don’t perform studies), so the meta-analysis was invented. But what is told by a meta-analysis? Continue reading
Sloppy science & good read
I’m packing for vacation. The book that I will NOT pack is: Rigor Mortis, how sloppy science creates worthless cures, crushes hope and wastes billions by Richard Harris. I read it already two times, and anyone interested in science, or trying to deliver a piece of it once in a while, should read it. It makes you realise what we do, what we publish and what we read. And then, it makes you humble (or sad, or furious, or happy). Continue reading
Attacking the fecal veneer*
What an excellent start of 2017. A great study from the USA today in Lancet: In a pragmatic cluster-randomized crossover study they tested 4 patient room cleaning strategies on the effectiveness to reduce acquisition with relevant bacteria for the incoming patients. The conclusion states that “enhanced terminal room disinfection decreases the risk of pathogen acquisition.” Yet, this paper is so “data-dense” that you must read the methods (and supplements) to get the picture. In one shot: Not for C. diff, may be for MRSA and yes for VRE. Continue reading
Good in 2017: preprint publishing
My blog on the “disease called peer review” (Dec 12th) evoked many comments (including from some journal editors), and these directed me to the concept of preprint publishing. Physicists started this 25 years ago, and were followed by mathematicians, computer scientists, and more recently by biologists. It is not yet widely known or practiced in the medical sciences. At least I was barely familiar with it, but I can only admit that this may well help to cure the “disease called peer review“ and H-indexitis. Continue reading
Science in transition, or not?
Something is happening in my university. My dean, prof. Frank Miedema (H-index >70), and friends discovered that the blibliometric way of evaluating quality of science (of a person or an institute) is wrong. (Especially) Young researchers are pursuing – for the wrong reasons – a high H-index (many papers cited frequently) and the publication pressure distracts them from doing the better things for patients and society. So, they decided to break free, and they tell their story this week in Nature (high impact factor, isn’t that what they call irony?).
I whole-heartedly agree with the philosophy of “Science in transition”. The impact system is sick, see. In Nature, also the story of Mark Ferguson, former dean of biology at the University of Manchester: as a predecessor of the Science Transitioners he decided 20 years ago that professor applicants should, instead of their impressive publication list, submit what they considered their 3 most important publications, with motivation.
That made me think. What would I submit? Here they are:
The recognition that the number of other patients with VRE in a ward is the best predictor for new acquisitions, see. Bob Weinstein named it colonization pressure, and the subsequent recognition that this number in the ward is influenced not only by acquisitions, but also by admitted and discharged patients got me on a plane to Oxford to learn about mathematical modelling and that the dynamics of AMR in a hospital are quite similar to malaria (healthcare workers being mosquitos). Today, I still enjoy working with mathematicians.
Two years later we had the first 2 outbreaks with VRE in the Netherlands. We studied these isolates, together with a bunch of isolates I took home from Chicago and other outbreaks across the globe. Rob Willems and Janetta Top discovered that all outbreak isolates contained the esp-gene (and others did not), see. Now we know that a subclade of E. faecium, containing esp and much more, is responsible fort he global pandemic of ampicillin-resistant and vancomycin-resistant E. faecium. Today, I still enjoy working with molecular biologists.
Six years ago we thought of ways to bypass the hurdles that killed clinically relevant research for treating community-acquired pneumonia (CAP); antibiotics before randomization to study antibiotics and enrolling only a fraction of those actually treated for CAP. Inspired by a previous study we used a cluster randomized approach and changed the hospital antibiotic policy every 4 months, see. The 3 options were – without preference – recommended by our national guideline. It took us 3 years to get funding and IRB approval, but in the end we were among the first to integrate randomized comparative effectiveness research with patient care, see. I firmly believe that this type of research is the future for infection prevention.
Not sure if I would have been hired, since all 3 studies were published in respectable journals (and were cited). My point, science must transit, but it should not stop us from publishing our work in journals that are read by many colleagues, as I am convinced that these studies would not have received the same attention if published in non-peer-reviewed journals. I trust my dean & Science in Transition are with me on this.
I wrote this blog while listening to my playlist on Spotify, and at the end of writing Carly Simon sang “You’re so vain”.
Reflections on Infection Prevention and Control 