Six hundred and fifty-five central venous catheters (CVC) in 496 patients in the intensive care unit of Hospital Sultanah Aminah were studied to determine the incidence and risk factors for central venous catheter-related blood stream infection (CR-BSI). CR-BSI was diagnosed in 38 catheters, giving an incidence of 9.43 CR-BSI per 1000 catheter days. The mean duration in situ was 8.4 +/- 4.9 day...

INTRODUCTION Catheter-associated bloodstream infection (CA-BSI) is the most common nosocomial infection in neonatal intensive care units. There is evidence that care bundles to reduce CA-BSI are effective in the adult literature. The aim of this study was to reduce CA-BSI in a Brazilian neonatal intensive care unit by means of a care bundle including few strategies or procedures of prevention a...

BACKGROUND Physicians rely on blood culture to diagnose bloodstream infections (BSI) despite its limitations. As new technologies emerge for rapid BSI diagnosis, optimization of their application to patient care requires an understanding of clinicians' perspectives on BSI diagnosis and how a rapid test would influence medical decisions. METHODS We administered a 26-question survey to practiti...

Background The prognostic value of the bone scan index (BSI) in metastatic prostate cancer (mPCa) remained controversial. Therefore, we performed a meta-analysis to determine the predictive value of BSI and survival in patients with mPCa. Materials and Methods A literature search was performed in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane library databases. Hazard ratios (HRs), concordance i...

Bornhop et al. (1) had shown that interactions between protein molecules in solution can be detected bymeasuring the solution refractive index shifts using a technique referred to as backscattering interferometry (BSI). The origin of the BSI signal was unclear. In a recent article in PNAS, Bornhop et al. (2) claim to provide an explanation of its origin. Based on a large body of published liter...

BACKGROUND Bathing suit ichthyosis (BSI) and self-improving collodion ichthyosis (SICI) are 2 minor variants of generalized autosomal recessive congenital ichthyosis. Bathing suit ichthyosis is characterized by scaling of the skin in a bathing suit pattern, mainly limited to the trunk, whereas SICI is characterized by complete disappearance of the skin lesions. OBSERVATIONS We report genotypi...

This study evaluated the incidence and risk factors of bloodstream infection (BSI) among patients with a double-lumen central venous catheter (CVC) for hemodialysis (HD) and identified the microorganisms isolated from the bloodstream. A follow-up included all patients (n=156) who underwent hemodialysis by double-lumen CVC at the Federal University of São Paulo-UNIFESP, Brazil, over a one-year p...

TO THE EDITOR—Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC)–producing K. pneumoniae (KPC-Kp) has reached a worldwide diffusion, and the associated mortality rate of infected patients is ranging from 45% to 56% [1]. Several risk factors for mortality were identified in patients with KPC-Kp bloodstream infection (KPC-Kp BSI), such as the severity of the underlying disease or the delay in administrati...

To the Editor—We read with interest the article by Kallen et al published in the April 2008 issue of the journal. Kallen et al presented a retrospective cohort study of bloodstream infection (BSI) in patients treated with intravenous prostanoids. The authors concluded that BSI due to gram-negative pathogens was more common in patients who received treatment with intravenous treprostinil than am...