BACKGROUND Understanding nosocomial pathogen transmission is restricted by culture limitations. Novel platforms, such as PCR-based electron spray ionization-time-of-flight-mass spectrometry (ESI-TOF-MS), may be useful as investigational tools. METHODS Traditional clinical microbiology (TCM) and PCR/ESI-TOF-MS were used to recover and detect microorganisms from the hands and personal protectiv...

OBJECTIVES To validate and assess reliability of a novel triage system, one-two-triage (OTT), that can be applied by inexperienced providers in low-resource settings. METHODS This study was a two-phase prospective, comparative study conducted at three hospitals. Phase I assessed criterion validity of OTT on all patients arriving at an American university hospital by comparing agreement among ...

The HPLC system was equipped with a Waters XBridgeTM C18 column (2.1 × 150 mm, 5 μm), and the column temperature was set to 25 °C. The mobile phases for metabolic fingerprinting consisted of 0.1% formic acid in Milli-Q water and 5 mM ammonium acetate in Milli-Q water (solvent A, positive electrospray ionization (ESI+) and negative electrospray ionization (ESI–), respectively), acetonitrile (sol...

Liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC/ESI-MS/MS) has been frequently utilized for the sensitive and selective determination of the trace level compounds in biological samples. In LC/ESI-MS/MS, chemical derivatization is sometimes used to enhance the detection sensitivity of the analytes. This review presents an overview of the derivatization rea...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE An ESI for managing LBP is one of the most commonly performed interventions. The purpose of this observational study was to assess the effect of a therapeutic trial of a fluoroscopic interlaminar ESI for axial LBP and to analyze the outcome predictors. MATERIALS AND METHODS All patients who received an interlaminar ESI for axial LBP at our facility in 2007 and 2008 were...

Protein aggregation continues to attract significant interest in many areas of biology and medicine not only due to its pivotal role in the etiology of conformational diseases (such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's) but also due to its importance in the biopharmaceutical sector, where aggregation of protein therapeutics exerts a deleterious effect on their efficacy and safety. Despite the tremend...

OBJECTIVE To systematically appraise published comparative effectiveness evidence (clinical and economic) of epidural steroid injections (ESI) for lumbar spinal stenosis and to estimate Medicare reimbursement amounts for ESI procedures. TYPE: Systematic review. LITERATURE SURVEY PubMed, Embase, and CINAHL were searched through August 2012 for key words that pertain to low back pain, spinal st...

The rapid identification of bacteria and fungi directly from the blood of patients with suspected bloodstream infections aids in diagnosis and guides treatment decisions. The development of an automated, rapid, and sensitive molecular technology capable of detecting the diverse agents of such infections at low titers has been challenging, due in part to the high background of genomic DNA in blo...

Achieving a rapid microbiological diagnosis is crucial for decreasing morbidity and mortality of patients with a bloodstream infection, as it leads to the administration of an appropriate empiric antimicrobial therapy. Molecular methods may offer a rapid alternative to conventional microbiological diagnosis involving blood culture. In this study, the performance of a new technology that uses br...