News

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have developed a new laboratory test that can rapidly identify the bacterium responsible for staph infections. This new test takes advantage of unique isotopic labeling combined with specific bacteriophage amplification to rapidly identify Staphylococcus aureus.

As mosquito-borne viral diseases like West Nile fever, dengue fever, and chikungunya fever spread rapidly around the globe, scientists at Virginia Tech are working to understand the mosquito's immune system and how the viral pathogens that cause these diseases are able to overcome it to be transmitted to human and animal hosts.

Reprocessing medical devices is an intricate, complicated task, and lapses in infection prevention practices can lead to poor patient outcomes and infections. Cognizant of these implications and the role that medical device preprocessing plays in the larger healthcare arena, last summer the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched a coordinated effort focusing on improvements in device design, reprocessing procedures and validation methodologies, and healthcare facility quality assurance practices.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is continuing to examine occupational exposure to infectious agents in healthcare settings, and members of the infection prevention and healthcare epidemiology communities are weighing in with their perspectives as the federal agency gathers data.

To gain perspective on what NHSN reporting means to infection preventionists (IPs), ICT consulted Linda R. Greene, RN, MPS, CIC, the director of infection prevention for Rochester General Health System in Rochester, N.Y.

We present our 2012 Regulatory Update, which originally appeared in the January 2012 print issue of Infection Control Today magazine.