Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology: Volume 4 -

Summary of the International Workshop National Laws and Guidelines for Control of Infections
Bertil Nyström, Hans Reber, Wolfgang Weuffen, William Schaffner
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

02 January 2015, pp. 397-398
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By way of introduction, Dr. Nyström described the hospital system in Sweden which is organized in a pyramidal fashion within each county. The largest hospital in each county contains a Department of Clinical Microbiology and the organization of hospital infection control activities follows this county structure.
An infection control unit is located within the clinical microbiology laboratory of the major county hospital. The head of the unit, the hospital epidemiologist, is usually a specialist in clinical microbiology with medical training. The epidemiologist has an infection control committee consisting of clinicians of various specialties, especially surgeons. There are usually two infection control nurses per county (now approximately 1 nurse/3000 beds with an eventual goal of 1 nurse/1000 to 1500 beds). The nurses advise the ward staff in all the county hospitals. There are only some 50 infection control nurses in Sweden; financial restrictions curtail the development of infection control activities.

Bacterial Infection from Intravascular Monitoring Devices
Charles W. Stratton, H. Bradford Hawley
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

02 January 2015, pp. 399-404
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During the past decade intravascular monitoring has become commonplace in hospital critical care areas. Early reports, such as that of Gardner et al, reassured us that these devices were safe. In fact, Gardner and associates noted not a single local or systemic infection that could be definitely related to radial artery monitoring catheters in 531 patients. Results of a more recent study by Band and Maki are more sobering. They found a 4% incidence of septicemia and an 18% incidence of local infection when they prospectively studied 130 arterial catheters in 95 patients. There were many differences between these two studies, but perhaps the two most important factors leading to the higher incidence of infection in the later study were increased duration of catheter placement and placement of the catheter by surgical cutdown or in a femoral artery.

Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology