792 research outputs found
Screening to select patients carrying extended-spectrum β-lactamase-producing Enterobacteriaceae for isolation in Flemish intensive care units: a Swiss cheese strategy?
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Reusable endoscopic water bottles: is daily renewal really necessary?
No full textMost guidelines recommend replacing endoscopic water bottles at least daily with newly sterilized or high-level disinfected water bottles. All these recommendations, however, are mainly based on expert opinions and outbreak reports. We tested the water quality from water bottles used in a gastrointestinal endoscopy unit where water bottles were used up to five days. The results show that the reuse of water bottles for more than one day is inadequate. The expert opinion in favour of changing water bottles daily rather than after five days is a sensible and safer option. (C) 2018 The Healthcare Infection Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Follow-up testing of borderline SARS-CoV-2 patients by rRT-PCR allows early diagnosis of COVID-19
No full textDetection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in nasopharyngeal samples using the real-time reverse transcription polymer-ase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) is the gold standard for diagnosing COVID-19. Determination of SARS-CoV-2 RNA by rRT-PCR sometimes results in an inconclusive test result due to a high cycle threshold-value.We retrospectively analyzed 30,851 SARS-CoV-2 rRT-PCR test results. Borderline positivity was considered as the presence of <= 25 viral copies per milliliter, while no amplification was considered as a negative test result. Of all test results, 204 were answered as borderline, of which 107 were accompanied by a follow-up test within 96 hours. Of the 107 follow-up samples, 10 (9.35%) were found positive for SARS-CoV-2. COVID-19 symptoms were not predictive for testing positive in the follow-up test.The positive SARS-CoV-2 samples in the follow-up group represented 0.92% of all positive test results, highlighting the need for retesting and increased hygienic measures for borderline SARS-CoV-2 patients [NCT04636294].(c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.We thank all medical laboratory technologists for their commitment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agencyin the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sector
Multicenter interlaboratory study of routine systems for the susceptibility testing of temocillin using a challenge panel of multidrug-resistant strains
No full textAccurate susceptibility result of temocillin (TMO) is important for treating infections caused by multidrug-resistant Enterobacterales. This multicenter study aimed to investigate the performance of routine temocillin testing assays against Enterobacterales challenging strains. Forty-seven selected clinical isolates were blindly analyzed by 12 Belgian laboratories using VITEK® 2 (n = 5) and BD Phoenix™ (n = 3) automated systems, ETEST® gradient strip (n = 3), and disk (3 brands) diffusion method (DD; n = 6) for temocillin susceptibility using standardized methodology. Results were interpreted using EUCAST 2023 criteria and compared to the broth microdilution (BMD; Sensititre™ panel) method used as gold standard. Methods' reproducibility was assessed by testing 3 reference strains in triplicate. A total of 702 organism-drug results were obtained against 33 TMO-susceptible and 14 TMO-resistant isolates. Excluding Proteae species (P. mirabilis and M. morganii), the essential agreement rates were excellent (91.5-100%) for all MIC-based methods. The highest category agreement was achieved by ETEST® (97.5%) followed by VITEK® 2 (93.2%), disk diffusion (91.6%), and BD Phoenix™ (88.5%). BD Phoenix™ and paper disk diffusion overcalled resistance (11.5% and 6.8% of major discrepancies, respectively), while ROSCO tablets diffusion and VITEK® 2 generated higher very major discrepancies (7.1% and 4.2% respectively). Inter-assay reproducibility was unsatisfactory using recommended E. coli ATCC 25922 strain but was excellent with E. coli ATCC 35218 and K. pneumoniae ATCC 700603 strains. This interlaboratory study suggests that routine testing methods provide accurate and reproducible TMO categorization results except for Proteae species.Funding
The study was funded by a specifc budget allocated by the National Antibiogram Committee through Federal Public Service. The Belgian National Reference Center is supported in part by the Belgian Ministry of Social Afairs through a fund within the national health insurance system (INAMI-RIZIV).
Acknowledgements
We thank the staf of the laboratories who participated this study and the members of the Belgian National Antimicrobial susceptibility testing Committee for their scientifc and logistic support: Jerina Boelens, Laetitia Brassinne, Lucy Catteau
[Sciensano], Pieter-Jan Ceyssens, Julie Descy, Stefanie Desmet, Sarah Gils, Katrien Latour [Sciensano], Bénédicte Lissoir, Koen Magerman, Veerle Matheeussen, Cécile Meex, Hector Rodriguez-Villalobos, Sarah Vandamme [Universitaire Ziekenhuis Antwerpen], Anne-Marie Van den Abeele, Aline Vilain [Sciensano], Kris Vernelen, Ingrid Wybo [Universitaire Ziekenhuis Brussels], Harun Yaras [Belgian Antibiotic Policy Coordination Commission], Nicolas Yin [Laboratoire Hospitalier Universitaire de Bruxelles]
Accepting Optimally in Automated Negotiation with Incomplete Information (abstract)
No full textIntelligent SystemsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
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Episode #2: Interview with President Koen Lenaerts
No full textEpisode #2 of the Borderlines CJEU Series features CJEU President Koen Lenaerts in conversation with Professor Katerina Linos (Berkeley) and Professor Mark Pollack (Temple University). President Lenaerts has been re-elected to the Court’s top office by his peers three times since 2015, having served tirelessly since his nomination to the CJEU in 2003 by home country of Belgium. His interview traces the historic path to today’s Court of Justice, and illuminates differences from other courts, including the U.S. federal judicial system.Listeners will come away with an overview of the Court’s functions and structural methodology in interpreting the EU legal order, including the role of the President, the Judge rapporteur, and the Advocate General. Presidential responsibilities include assigning cases to Judges and presiding over the Grand Chamber to deal with the most important cases. New developments in case law, evolving technological access, and finding balance between unity and diversity, privacy and security, are addressed by the head of the EU’s judicial institution.President Lenaerts in total has spent 35 years as a European Union Judge, initially serving on the Court of First Instance of the European Communities (now the General Court) when it was established in 1989. He earned his legal degrees including a doctorate in Belgium and also obtained a Masters of Laws and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University. President Lenaerts is Professor of European Union Law at Leuven University in Belgium and a member of many legal and academic associations including the Academia Europaea, London; the Advisory Council of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law; the Advisory Board of the Centre of Law and Governance in Europe, University College London; the Governing Board of the Foundation of the Academy of European Law (ERA), Trier; and the Board of Trustees of the Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht, Heidelberg. He is the recipient of numerous awards and author of a vast list of publications.</p
Correction to: Decisional Balance Inventory (DBI) Adolescent Form for Smoking: Psychometric Properties of the Persian Version
No full textCorrection After publication of the article [1], it has been brought to our attention that the first and last names of the third author were transposed in the original article. The author was published as “Ponnet Koen” where in fact the correct name is “Koen Ponnet”. The original article has been revised to reflect this
Acceptance conditions in automated negotiation
No full textIn every negotiation with a deadline, one of the negotiating parties has to accept an offer to avoid a break off. A break off is usually an undesirable outcome for both parties, therefore it is important that a negotiator employs a proficient mechanism to decide under which conditions to accept. When designing such conditions one is faced with the acceptance dilemma: accepting the current offer may be suboptimal, as better offers may still be presented. On the other hand, accepting too late may prevent an agreement from being reached, resulting in a break off with no gain for either party. Motivated by the challenges of bilateral negotiations between automated agents and by the results and insights of the automated negotiating agents competition (ANAC), we classify and compare state-of-the-art generic acceptance conditions. We focus on decoupled acceptance conditions, i.e. conditions that do not depend on the bidding strategy that is used. We performed extensive experiments to compare the performance of acceptance conditions in combination with a broad range of bidding strategies and negotiation domains. Furthermore we propose new acceptance conditions and we demonstrate that they outperform the other conditions that we study. In particular, it is shown that they outperform the standard acceptance condition of comparing the current offer with the offer the agent is ready to send out. We also provide insight in to why some conditions work better than others and investigate correlations between the properties of the negotiation environment and the efficacy of acceptance conditions.MediamaticsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Evaluation of a comprehensive pre-procedural screening protocol for COVID-19 in times of a high SARS CoV-2 prevalence: a prospective cross-sectional study
No full textBACKGROUND: To minimise the risk of COVID-19 transmission, an ambulant screening protocol for COVID-19 in patients before admission to the hospital was implemented, combining the SARS CoV-2 reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) on a nasopharyngeal swab, a chest computed tomography (CT) and assessment of clinical symptoms. The aim of this study was to evaluatethe diagnostic yield and the proportionality of this pre-procedural screeningprotocol. METHODS: In this mono-centre, prospective, cross-sectional study, all patients admitted to the hospital between 22nd April 2020 until 14th May 2020 for semi-urgent surgery, haematological or oncological treatment, or electrophysiological investigationunderwent a COVID-19 screening 2 days before their procedure. At a 2-week follow-up, the presence of clinical symptoms was evaluated by telephone as a post-hoc evaluation of the screening approach.Combined positive RT-PCR assay and/or positive chest CT was used as gold standard. Post-procedural outcomes of all patients diagnosed positive for COVID-19 were assessed. RESULTS: In total,528 patients were included of which 20 (3.8%) were diagnosed as COVID-19 positive and 508 (96.2%) as COVID-19 negative. 11 (55.0%) of COVID-19 positive patients had only a positive RT-PCR assay, 3 (15.0%) had only a positive chest CT and 6 (30%) had both a positive RT-PCR assay and chest CT. 10 out of 20 (50.0%) COVID-19 positive patients reported no single clinical symptom at the screening. At 2 week follow-up, 50% of these patients were still asymptomatic. 37.5% of all COVID-19 negative patients were symptomatic at screening. In the COVID-19 negative group without symptoms at screening, 78 (29.3%) patients developed clinical symptoms at a 2-week follow-up. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that routine chest CT and assessment of self-reported symptoms have limited value in the preprocedural COVID-19 screening due to low sensitivity and/or specificity.status: Publishe
Measuring Safety Culture Using an Integrative Approach: The Development of a Comprehensive Conceptual Framework and an Applied Safety Culture Assessment Instrument
No full textAn exponential amount of academic research has been dedicated to the safety culture concept, but still, no consensus has been reached on its definition and content. In general, safety culture research lacks an interdisciplinary approach. Furthermore, although the concept of safety culture is characterised by complexity and multifacetedness, the safety culture concept has been characterised by reductionism, where models and theories simplify the concept in order to better grasp it, leading to confined approaches. In this article, the multifacetedness of safety culture is acknowledged, and the topic is addressed from a safety science perspective, combining insights from multiple academic disciplines. An integrative and comprehensive conceptual framework to assess safety culture in organisations is developed, taking into account the limitations of existing models, as well as the needs of the work field. This conceptual framework is called the ‘Integrated Safety Culture Assessment’ (ISCA), where the ‘assessment’ refers to its practical usability. The practical rendition of ISCA can be used to map the safety culture of an organisation and to formulate recommendations in this regard, with the ultimate goal of bringing about a change towards a positive safety culture. The comprehensiveness of ISCA lies in the inclusion of technological factors, organisational or contextual factors and human factors interacting and interrelating with each other, and in considering both observable or objective safety-related aspects in an organisation, and non-observable or subjective safety-related aspects. When using ISCA, organisational safety culture is assessed in an integrative way by using a variety of research methods involving the entire organisation, and by taking into account the specific context of the organisation
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