Infections in ICUs Plummeting, Too Many Remain in Hospitals and Dialysis Clinics

Infections in ICUs Plummeting, Too Many Remain in Hospitals and Dialysis Clinics

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2011/p0301_vitalsigns.html

ICUs show that preventing infections is possible; other health care settings must adopt prevention practices

From the press release

The number of bloodstream infections in intensive care unit patients with central lines decreased by 58 percent in 2009 compared to 2001, according to a new CDC Vital Signs report. During these nine years, the decrease represented up to 27,000 lives saved and $1.8 billion in excess health care costs. Bloodstream infections in patients with central lines can be deadly, killing as many as 1 in 4 patients who gets one….

…

“Preventing bloodstream infections is not only possible, it should be expected. Meticulous insertion and care of the central line by all members of the clinical care team including doctors, nurses and others at the bedside is essential. The next step is to apply what we’ve learned from this to other health care settings and other health care-associated conditions, so that all patients are protected,” said Thomas R. Frieden, M.D., M.P.H., CDC director.

In addition to the ICU findings, the report found that about 60,000 bloodstream infections in patients with central lines occurred in non-ICU health care settings such as hospital wards and kidney dialysis clinics. About 23,000 of these occurred in non-ICU patients (2009) and about 37,000 infections occurred in dialysis clinics patients (2008).

“This reduction is the result of hospital, local, state and national medical and public health efforts focused on tracking infection rates and then using that information to tailor and evaluate prevention programs,” said Denise Cardo, M.D., director of CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion. “The report findings point to a clear need for action beyond ICUs. Fortunately, we have a prevention model focused on full collaboration that can be applied broadly to maximize prevention efforts.”

Infections are one of the leading causes of hospitalization and death for hemodialysis patients. At any given time, about 350,000 people are receiving hemodialysis treatment for kidney failure. Seven in 10 patients who receive dialysis begin that treatment through a central line….

Related Articles

• Patient Safety Awareness Week 3: Positive News on Infections, More Work Needed (hcfama.org)
• Rates of Pneumonia Dramatically Reduced in Patients on Ventilators in Michigan Intensive Care Units (nlm.nih.gov)
• Challenges In Stemming The Spread Of Resistant Bacteria In Intensive Care
• Simple Cotton Swab Slashes Reduce Post-Op Infection (Medical News today, June 2011)
• Infection Risk Lurks in Hospital ICUs (webmd.com)

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PubMed Mobile Beta & Helpful Links on Searching PubMed for BioMedical Information

From the National Library of Medicine (NLM)  Technical Bulletin article posted March 17 2011

PubMed® Mobile Beta provides a simplified mobile friendly Web interface to access PubMed***. PubMed Mobile includes the same basic search functionality and content as Standard PubMed; that is, all search terms and fields work similarly (see Figure 1).

 

Figure 1: PubMed Mobile homepage.

Simply enter your search in the search box and click “Search” (see Figure 2).

The inital (Summary) display includes the article title, first author’s name, journal title abbreviation, and year of publication.

Figure 2: PubMed Mobile Summary search results.

Click “Free Full Text” or “Review” on the Summary search results page to filter your results. Click “Next” to go to subsequent search result pages.

Click the article title to display the Abstract format (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: PubMed Mobile —
beginning of the Abstract format.

Not all data provided on the Standard PubMed Abstract format are included (for example, MeSH® vocabulary); to see complete data use the link to Standard PubMed.

Related Citations display below the abstract. On the abstract page, click “Previous” or “Next” to navigate to other citation abstracts. Click the “Back to results” link to redisplay the Summary search results (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: PubMed Mobile —
tail end of the Abstract format.

A link to Standard PubMed is available at the bottom of all PubMed Mobile pages.

PubMed Mobile does not include specialized search pages, such as Limits and Advanced search, or added features, such as My NCBI, Clipboard, or LinkOut/Outside Tool. To use these and other PubMed features, display your retrieval in Standard PubMed via the link at the bottom of the screen.

By Kathi Canese and Edward WelkerNational Center for Biotechnology Information

***PubMed is the largest indexer of the biomedical literature in the world. It can be rather intimidating to search the first few times because there are many options to refine your search in order to get tailored relevant results. Believe me, it is worth the effort!

If you would like expert personalized PubMed search advice, please do not hesitate to contact (preferably call ahead!) a  reference librarian at your local academic, medical, or public library.

Many academic and medical libraries offer some degree of personalized reference service to the public. These services are largely offered by professionals with a Masters degree in Library Science who have many years experience providing relevant research articles and other resources to a wide variety of health professionals and others. They enjoy teaching both formally and informally.

Please feel free to email me (jmflahiff at yahoo.com) with any questions. I would be happy to work on a question for up to 2 hours and reply within 3 days. No charge.

Here are some PubMed tutorials and guides

• PubMed Tutorial (National Library of Medicine)
• PubMed Online Training [Quick animated tours, Webcasts, detailed tutorial, Webcasts, and more] (National Library of Medicine)
• PubMed MeSH searching (sullivanlibrary.wordpress.com)
• PubMed Search Help Items (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• PubMed Toxicology Subset Streamlines Biomedical Searches in the Professional Literature (jflahiff.wordpress.com

Related Articles

• PubMed Health Provides Disease and Treatment Information for Consumers (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• Download PubMed Search Results Into a Spreadsheet with FLink (jflahiff.wordpress.com)
• How to obtain free/low cost medical articles in medical and scientific journals (jflahiff.wordpress.com)