Healthcare Associated Infections In The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

This issue of Clinics in Perinatology reviews Healthcare Associated Infections in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Guest Editors Drs. Karen Fairchild and Richard Polin have assembled a panel of expert contributors to pen articles on Epidemiology and Risk Factors for NICU HAI: Genes and Environment; Strategies to Reduce NICU HAI: Line, Tube, and Hand Hygiene;? Candida in the NICU: Pros and Cons of Prophylaxis; MRSA in the NICU; New Concepts of Microbial Translocation in the Neonatal Intestine: Mechanisms and Prevention; Antibiotic Resistance in NICU Pathogens: Mechanisms, Clinical Impact, and Prevention; Biomarkers for LONS: Cytokines and Beyond; Heart Rate Variability: A Novel Physiomarker for Sepsis Detection in the NICU; Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia; Perinatal Infection and Prematurity; and Meningitis in Neonates: Bench to Bedside.

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

With advances in technology and medical science, children with previously untreatable and often fatal conditions, such as congenital heart disease, extreme prematurity and pediatric malignancy, are living longer. While this is a tremendous achievement, pediatric providers are now more commonly facing challenges in these medical complex children both as a consequence of their underlying disease and the delivery of medical care. The term healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) encompass both infections that occur in the hospital and those that occur as a consequence of healthcare exposure and medical complexity in the outpatient setting. HAIs are associated with substantial morbidity and mortality for the individual patient as well as seriously taxing the healthcare system as a whole. In studies from the early 2000s, over 11% of all children in pediatric intensive care units develop HAIs and this figure increases substantially if neonatal intensive care units are considered. While progress has been made in decreasing the rates of HAI in the hospital, these infections remain a major burden on the medical system. In a study published in 2013, the annual estimated costs of the five most common HAIs in the United States totaled $9.8 billion. An estimated 648,000 patients developed HAIs in hospitals within the US in 2011 and children with healthcare-associated bloodstream infection have a greater than three-fold increased risk of death. While a number of texts discuss HAIs in the broader context of infectious diseases or pediatric infectious diseases (such as Mandell’s Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases or Long and Pickering’s Principles and Practice of Pediatric Infectious Diseases) no single text specifically focuses on the epidemiology, diagnosis and management of HAI in children. Many infectious diseases texts are organized based on the microbiology of infection and from this starting point then discussing the clinical syndromes associated with the organism of interest. For instance, a chapter on Staphylococcus aureus may contain a brief discussion of the role of S. aureus in surgical site infections in the wider context of all staphylococcal disease. For clinicians caring for children at the bedside, however, the clinical syndrome is typically appreciated and intervention necessary prior to organism identification. We propose a text that details both the general principles involved in HAIs and infection prevention but also provides a problem oriented approach. Such a text would be of interest to intensivists, neonatologists, hospitalists, oncologists, infection preventionists and infectious diseases specialists. The proposed text will be divided into three principle sections: 1) Basic Principles of Infection Control and Prevention, 2) Major Infectious Syndromes and 3) Infections in Vulnerable Hosts. Chapters in the Major Infectious Syndromes section will include discussion of the epidemiology, microbiology, clinical features, diagnosis, medical management (or surgical management as appropriate) and prevention of the disease entity of interest. Chapters will seek to be evidenced based as much as possible drawing from the published medical literature as well as from clinical practice guidelines (such as those from the Infectious Diseases Society of America) when applicable. We intend to include tables, figures and algorithms as appropriate to assist clinicians in the evaluation and management of these often complex patients. Finally, we intend to invite authors to participate in this project from across a number of medical specialties including infectious diseases, infection control, critical care, oncology and surgery to provide a multidisciplinary understanding of disease. It is our intent to have many chapters be co-written by individuals in different subspecialties; for instance, a chapter on ventilator-associated pneumonia may be co-written by both infectious disease and critical care medicine specialists. Such a unique text has the potential to provide important guidance for clinicians caring for these often fragile children.

The WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care provide health-care workers (HCWs), hospital administrators and health authorities with a thorough review of evidence on hand hygiene in health care and specific recommendations to improve practices and reduce transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to patients and HCWs. The present Guidelines are intended to be implemented in any situation in which health care is delivered either to a patient or to a specific group in a population. Therefore, this concept applies to all settings where health care is permanently or occasionally performed, such as home care by birth attendants. Definitions of health-care settings are proposed in Appendix 1. These Guidelines and the associated WHO Multimodal Hand Hygiene Improvement Strategy and an Implementation Toolkit (http://www.who.int/gpsc/en/) are designed to offer health-care facilities in Member States a conceptual framework and practical tools for the application of recommendations in practice at the bedside. While ensuring consistency with the Guidelines recommendations, individual adaptation according to local regulations, settings, needs, and resources is desirable. This extensive review includes in one document sufficient technical information to support training materials and help plan implementation strategies. The document comprises six parts.

This book aims at informing on new trends, challenges and solutions, in the multidisciplinary field of biomedical engineering. It covers traditional biomedical engineering topics, as well as innovative applications such as artificial intelligence in health care, tissue engineering , neurotechnology and wearable devices. Further topics include mobile health and electroporation-based technologies, as well as new treatments in medicine. Gathering the proceedings of the 8th European Medical and Biological Engineering Conference (EMBEC 2020), held on November 29 - December 3, 2020, in Portorož, Slovenia, this book bridges fundamental and clinically-oriented research, emphasizing the role of education, translational research and commercialization of new ideas in biomedical engineering. It aims at inspiring and fostering communication and collaboration between engineers, physicists, biologists, physicians and other professionals dealing with cutting-edge themes in and advanced technologies serving the broad field of biomedical engineering.

Enhance your knowledge of neonatal-perinatal medicine and/or study for Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine board certification or recertification with this new study guide from the editors of NeoReviews. This new guide includes more than 1,200 questions previously published in NeoReviews from January 2007 to December 2017. Each question is followed by a short explanation of the correct answer with references, including the original article. Chapters include Cardiology Dermatology Endocrinology ENT and Ophthalmology Fluids, Electrolytes, Nutrition Gastrointestinal Genetics and Inborn Errors of Metabolism Hematology/Oncology Immunology Infectious Diseases Maternal-Fetal Medicine Neonatal Resuscitation Neurology Renal Respiratory Statistics, Research, Health Services, and Ethics

Thoroughly revised and updated for its Fourth Edition, this highly acclaimed volume is the most comprehensive reference on hospital epidemiology and infection control. Written by over 150 leading experts, this new edition examines every type of hospital-acquired (nosocomial) infection and addresses every issue relating to surveillance, prevention, and control of these infections in patients and in healthcare workers. This new edition features new or significantly increased coverage of emerging infectious diseases, avian influenza, governmental regulation of infection control and payment practices related to hospital-acquired infections, molecular epidemiology, the increasing prevalence of community-acquired MRSA in healthcare facilities, system-wide infection control provisions for healthcare systems, hospital infection control issues following natural disasters, and antimicrobial stewardship in reducing the development of antimicrobial-resistant organisms.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This textbook, endorsed by the European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT), provides adult and paediatric nurses with a full and informative guide covering all aspects of transplant nursing, from basic principles to advanced concepts. It takes the reader on a journey through the history of transplant nursing, including essential and progressive elements to help nurses improve their knowledge and benefit the patient experience, as well as a comprehensive introduction to research and auditing methods. This new volume specifically intended for nurses, complements the ESH-EBMT reference title, a popular educational resource originally developed in 2003 for physicians to accompany an annual training course also serving as an educational tool in its own right. This title is designed to develop the knowledge of nurses in transplantation. It is the first book of its kind specifically targeted at nurses in this specialist field and acknowledges the valuable contribution that nursing makes in this area. This volume presents information that is essential for the education of nurses new to transplantation, while also offering a valuable resource for more experienced nurses who wish to update their knowledge.