1,721,084 research outputs found
The impact of hand hygiene technique on hand hygiene compliance and microbiological efficacy
No full textMolecular epidemiology of Clostridium difficile for clinical practice
No full textDuring the last decade, the world has witnessed numerous outbreaks of Clostridium difficile infections (CDI) in healthcare settings. Increasing incidence rates of CDI have been mainly attributed to the successful global spread of a more virulent strain of C. difficile – namely PCR-ribotype 027. More recent studies, however, point to the emergence of other ribotypes as the main cause of the continuing epidemic. This review summarises the current literature on the molecular epidemiology of C. difficile as well as its implications for clinical practice
Emergence of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium vanA ST612 with reduced daptomycin susceptibility, Switzerland, 2018 to 2024
No full textWe describe the emergence of vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium (VREfm) vanA ST612 in Switzerland from 2018 to 2024 that resulted in a national outbreak investigation. This clone has predisposing genetic alterations associated with reduced daptomycin susceptibility. The National Nosocomial Outbreak Investigation Center was commissioned to assess the temporospatial distribution of this clone in Switzerland and evaluate its clinical impact. Core genome multi-locus sequence typing (cgMLST) revealed five separate VREfm vanA ST612 clusters of different sizes across different healthcare regions, but predominantly in the German-speaking part. The broad geographic dissemination and temporal variation in detection suggests multiple introductions to the healthcare system. One of these cgMLST clusters (n = 79 cases) with an infection rate of 12.8% was ongoing, mainly affecting patients with extensive contact to the Swiss healthcare system or prior antibiotic exposure. The detection of daptomycin non-susceptibility in patients without prior daptomycin exposure suggests ongoing E. faecium adaptation due to external pressures. Future prevention efforts should emphasise assessing barriers for active surveillance cultures, developing a national standard for cost-effective sequencing methods and promoting the sharing of sequencing results together with epidemiological metadata. Our report intends to raise awareness as this sequence type might already be spreading undetected in European countries
Cutting edges in Clostridioides difficile infections
No full textClostridioides difficile is the most common cause of hospital-acquired diarrhoea and one of the most important causes of hospital-acquired infections. It results in significant morbidity, mortality and economic burden - especially in the context of recurrent infections. After initial antibiotic therapy of a C. difficile infection, recurrence occurs in about 20% of all patients, which increases the risk of further recurrence to about 45%.
Traditional therapeutic options for treatment of C. difficile infection include metronidazole or vancomycin. Newer therapy options such as fidaxomicin, the administration of monoclonal antibodies or faecal microbiota transplantation demonstrate significant advantages over traditional therapies, particularly regarding the reduction of the recurrence rate.
This article highlights the main differences between the recommendations of the Swiss Society for Infectious Diseases on the management of “Clostridioides difficile infection” and the IDSA/SHEA reference guideline “Clinical Practice Guidelines for Clostridium difficile Infection in Adults and Children: 2017 Update by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA)” and discusses some important challenges in -treatment of C. difficile
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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