Search Tag: Infections

2013 01 Aug

A moderate increase in vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) at one hospital can lead to a nearly 3 percent increase in VRE in every other hospital in that county, according to a study in the August issue of the American Journal of Infection Control , the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology...Read more

2013 23 Jul

Xenex Healthcare Services, the world leader in pulsed xenon UV room disinfection systems for healthcare facilities, announced on July 22, 2013, it changed its name to Xenex Disinfection Services. “We changed the company name to better describe our product offering and company strategy,” said Morris Miller, CEO of Xenex. “The most important step in...Read more

2013 18 Jul

Kansas State University researchers are defeating persistent bacteria known for causing infections in hospitals. The bacteria, Enterococcus faecalis, are the second-leading cause of hospital-associated infections in the U.S., said Lynn Hancock , associate professor of biology and leader of the research. His team has discovered how a regulatory...Read more

2013 09 Jul

The influenza virus’ ability to mutate quickly has produced new, emerging strains that make drug discovery more critical than ever. For the first time, researchers at Seattle BioMed, along with collaborators at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the University of Washington, have...Read more

2013 26 Jun

Germ-fighting robots that pulse UV light are used by Loyola University Health System to fight infectious disease. Hospitals are synonymous with cleanliness and now Loyola University Health System is the first academic medical center in Illinois to take disinfection to futuristic levels. Nicknamed “Ralph” by the housekeeping staff at Gottlieb...Read more

2013 26 Jun

Hospitals across England reduced the rate of serious bloodstream infections in intensive care units (ICUs) during a two-year programme, research has shown. More than 200 ICUs in England participated in the National Patient Safety Agency’s Matching Michigan programme, which aimed to bring down infections linked to central venous catheters to...Read more

2013 18 Jun

A team from the University of Toronto – including researchers from Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute of Biomaterials & Biomedical Engineering – has created an electronic chip that can analyze blood and other clinical samples for infectious bacteria with record-breaking speed. Life-threatening bacterial infections...Read more

2013 14 Jun

Staph infections in hospitals are a serious concern, so much so that the term Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is as commonly known as MRI. Far less known is that in many of these cases, patients are infecting themselves. In heart surgeries and knee and joint-replacement procedures, up to 85 percent of staph infections after...Read more

2013 14 Jun

HN is the first healthcare entity in northern Illinois to utilize a Xenex robot to disinfect patient rooms, operating rooms and other areas. Requiring only 5-10 minutes to disinfect a room, the Xenex system is the fastest, safest, and most effective method for the advanced cleaning of hospital rooms, scientifically proven to destroy all major classes...Read more

2013 07 Jun

A new study from Columbia University School of Nursing supports a growing body of evidence that women are less likely to contract bloodstream or surgical site infections than their male counterparts. Researchers investigated the incidence of infection in thousands of hospitalized patients and found the odds for women succumbing to a bloodstream...Read more

2013 07 Jun

BioFire Diagnostics, Inc. announced today that it obtained the CE IVD Mark under the European Directive on In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices for its FilmArray Blood Culture Identification (BCID) Panel. The BCID Panel tests positive blood cultures and can identify more than 100 blood pathogens known to cause sepsis. Sepsis, a serious medical condition,...Read more

2013 07 Jun

Xenex Healthcare Services announced on June 6, 2013, that Dr. Mark Stibich presented the poster “Reductions in Environmental Contamination and Hospital Infection Rates After Implementing a Pulsed-Xenon Ultraviolet (PX-UV) Disinfection System” at the International Forum on Quality & Safety in Healthcare in London. According to the poster, use of the...Read more

2013 06 Jun

CDC provides tools to help all U.S. dialysis facilities reduce potentially deadly infections On May 13, 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released results of its Dialysis Bloodstream Infection Prevention Collaborative showing a 32 percent decrease in overall bloodstream infections and a 54 percent decrease in vascular...Read more

2013 29 May

Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president for patient safety for Johns Hopkins Medicine and one of the authors of the research. Pronovost is also editorial board of member of ICU Management. Private insurers rather than hospitals would reap the most savings by supporting programs to prevent these avoidable complications . Johns...Read more

2013 20 May

In the race to protect society from infectious microbes, the bugs are outrunning us. The need for new therapeutic agents is acute, given the emergence of novel pathogens as well as old foes bearing heightened antibiotic resistance. Shelley Haydel, a researcher at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute has a new approach to developing effective,...Read more

2013 16 May

Scientists at Imperial College London have identified four new proteins that act as receptors for an essential signalling molecule in bacteria such as MRSA. The receptors are thought to play an important role in enabling bacteria to respond to their environment. Their discovery provides scientists with vital clues in the hunt for new antibiotics,...Read more

2013 16 May

Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have created the first U.S. map that pinpoints hotspots for infection and severe sepsis related-deaths. (Credit: Penn Medicine) First Map of Its Kind Reveals Key Areas for Additional Research and Support Services In the past, researchers have sought to determine...Read more

2013 15 May

St. Anthony Hospital’s (Oklahoma) newest approach to disinfecting a room looks a little like a science fiction character. The new Xenex room disinfection system uses ultraviolet (UV-C) light that is 25,000 times more powerful than the sun to quickly ‘zap’ nasty organisms that cause infections like the flu, norovirus,...Read more

2013 11 Apr

Xenex, a robot that emits high-intensity ultraviolet light, kills germs in an operating room at Lancaster General Hospital (Image Credit: Dan Marschka, Lancaster Online) Pulsing lights blink inside a glass-walled room in the intensive care unit at Lancaster General Hospital (LGH). Meet LGH's newest housekeeper, and its newest weapon in the fight...Read more

2013 19 Mar

On 21 February 2013, WHO issued its recommendation for the composition of influenza vaccines for the 2013-2014 influenza season in the northern hemisphere. A short headline report on the vaccine recommendations for next season is available as well as a more detailed report which also contains information on the antiviral resistance and the laboratory-assessed...Read more

2013 07 Mar

Performing sensitive biological experiments is always a delicate affair. Few researchers, however, contend with the challenges faced by Cheryl Nickerson, whose working laboratory aboard the International Space Station (ISS) is located hundreds of miles above the Earth, traveling at some 17,000 miles per hour. Nickerson, a...Read more

2013 06 Mar

The Xenex "robot" uses pulse xenon to deliver UV light throughout patient rooms, operating rooms (ORs), equipment rooms, emergency rooms, intensive care units (ICUs) and public areas to destroy viruses, bacteria and bacterial spores in just 5-10 minutes per room. (Photo: Business Wire) Customers Report that Xenex Device Halts Spread of Norovirus...Read more

2013 05 Mar

A collaboration between researchers at the  School of Biochemistry and Immunology  and the  Department of Microbiology  at Trinity College Dublin has identified a mechanism by which the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) colonises our nasal passages. The study, recently published in the prestigious journal PLOS Pathogens, shows for the first...Read more