News

Nearly 100 hospitals have already signed up for the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI)s new Sterile Processing Benchmarks tool in the first few weeks since it was launched.

Children younger than 3 years old receive the same protective antibody response from the recommended two doses of licensed seasonal influenza vaccines regardless of whether the two doses are injected by needle, inhaled through a nasal spray or provided through one dose of each in any order, according to researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. Doctors usually give young children two matching vaccines, and one goal of the study was to determine whether giving two different types of vaccines works just as well.

Currently, there are at least 15 states that require some kind of reporting or screening for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), according to the latest statistics from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). While they acknowledge that healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) must be stopped, many infection preventionists say they feel as though knee-jerk legislation is leading this issue, and not the actual scientific evidence for active surveillance. No one can dispute that any means to eliminate HAIs is an imperative; however, as the push for implementation science increases, some are wondering if screening has been studied enough to warrant a legislative mandate. It's one of those issues with which infection preventionists and healthcare epidemiologists grapple as they continue to push for doing what's right for improved patient outcomes.

In recent months, the medical community has witnessed outbreaks of NDM-1, KPC and a new strain of Escherichia coli, underscoring the urgency of addressing antibiotic stewardship to save lives and billions of dollars in costs caused by antibiotic-resistant and antibiotic-susceptible pathogens.