To determine whether postoperative urinary infections were related to shaving before undergoing endoscopic urological surgery, 90 patients were randomly assigned to shaving or not shaving. Urinary cultures revealed infection in 10 patients. Half of them had been shaved, suggesting that this practice does not affect the incidence of urinary infections.

Antimicrobial agents used as disinfectants and antiseptics are increasing in epidemiologic importance. The regulation of topical antiseptics has ranged from nonexistent, lax and confusing to inclusion in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over-the-counter (OTC) review of drug ingredients. This article simplifies the complex history, current status and future possibilities for the hospital use of topical antiseptic products.

This survey investigated diagnostic and antimicrobial stewardship practices related to molecular respiratory panel testing in adults with lower respiratory tract infections at acute care hospitals. Most respondents reported use of rapid respiratory panels, but related stewardship practices were uncommon and the real-world impact of respiratory panels were difficult to quantify.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa previously has been reviewed in “Topics in Clinical Microbiology.” However, the increased importance of this micro-organism in nosocomial infections as well as new information on pathogenic mechanisms is such that this topic should be “revisited.” For example, the ubiquitous presence of this bacterium in nature and its ability to survive in hostile environments has been recently emphasized by episodes of P aeruginosa peritonitis, bacteremia and pseudobacteremia that have been linked to contaminated povidone-iodine. Clearly, P aeruginosa is an important pathogen and is deserving of careful and deliberate consideration.

The role of P aeruginosa as a nosocomial pathogen in hospitalized patients with critical illness is rapidly increasing. Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have shown that while nosocomial infections from Escherichia coli and Klebsiella have remained relatively constant from 1975 to 1984, the proportion of such infections caused by Pseudomonas has risen from 6.3% in 1975 to 11.4% in 1984. The frightening aspect of this epidemiologic data is the extremely high rate of mortality associated with hospital-acquired Pseudomonas infections. For example, the mortality rate for Pseudomonas bacteremia often ranges from 67% to 90% for neutropenic cancer patients. Among more general hospital patient populations, the mortality rate for Pseudomonas bacteremia can be similar depending on the underlying condition of the host.

In a recent communication, the manufacturer of a glutaraldehyde-based disinfectant described several important discoveries that became apparent during a recent review of claims of their product. Such updating of materials is an ongoing quality assurance mechanism for many reputable manufacturers.

Manufacturer A maintains that the old Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC) tuberculocidal testing procedure is prone to significant errors. Therefore, they developed a new, more reliable test (in their opinion), which has also been filed with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and on which their new recommendations are based. Other manufacturers may use the old or new AOAC test methods to satisfy requirements of the EPA.

We investigated the epidemiology and prevention of sharps injuries in the United Arab Emirates. Among 82 emergency nurses and 38 doctors who responded to our questionnaire, risk factors for sharp device injuries identified using the Haddon matrix included personal factors (for the pre-event phase, a lack of infection control training, a lack of immunization, and recapping needles, and for the postevent phase, underreporting of sharps injuries) and equipment-related factors (for the pre-event phase, failure to use safe devices; for the event phase, failure to use gloves in all appropriate situations). Nearly all injuries to doctors were caused by suture needles, and among nurses more than 50% of injuries were caused by hollow-bore needles.

Although varicella vaccination is recommended for varicella-susceptible healthcare workers (HCWs), breakthrough infection after vaccination is not unusual, especially following household exposures. We report breakthrough varicella in a vaccinated HCW and review the data on breakthrough infection and concerns for the healthcare setting.

To describe the key strategies and potential pitfalls involved with implementing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Prevention Initiative in a qualitative evaluation, we conducted in-depth interviews with MRSA Prevention Coordinators at 17 VA ß sites at 2 time points during program implementation.

We evaluated the usefulness of adding weekly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) screening to our established admission screening and clinical sampling in 4 acute care units of a university hospital. Our results suggest that weekly MRSA screening allows the detection of 56.1% of all cases of hospital-acquired MRSA carriage. These cases would have remained undetected had admission screening and clinical sampling been the only types of surveillance in place.

Of 100 patients discharged from short-stay units (SSUs) with antibiotics, 47 had a skin and soft-tissue infection, 22 had pneumonia, and 21 had a urinary tract infection. Among all discharge antibiotic prescriptions, 78% involved antibiotic overuse, most commonly excess duration (54 of 100) and guideline discordant selection (44 of 100).

This pilot, observational study involving 286 patients who underwent cardiac surgery found that patients who had endotracheal colonization with gram-negative bacteria at 1 week after surgery were more likely to develop subsequent infection compared to those without colonization (8 of 23 vs. 4 of 40; relative risk 2.3 [95% confidence interval, 1.3–4.1; P value < .05]).

The use of the OpenAI GPT-4 model in detecting catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) cases in small fictitious and curated patient data sets was investigated. Final analysis of 50 patients including 11 CAUTI cases yielded sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values of 91%, 92%, 83%, and 96%, respectively.