Author: Kelly Cawcutt

It’s Getting Hot in Here: The Conundrum of Fever in the ICU

Fever has plagued mankind through the ages although was not until the 1600s when Thomas Sydenham reportedly first recognized that fever was an innate response” to get rid of the injurious agents causing the disease”. In the intensive care unit, fever is one of the most common abnormal signs documented and frequently results in changes […]

Jan 24, 2019

Global Burden of Tuberculosis: Are We Making Any Improvements?

UNMC is a proud to play a critical role in biopreparedness and global health, which also means we have to stay up-to-date on global health, including tuberculosis. In a recent Infectious Diseases journal club, Dr. Lawler presented the following 2018 Lancet article on the global burden of TB. Global, regional, and national burden of tuberculosis, […]

Jan 21, 2019

Happy Holidays!

As the holiday season comes to a close, we here at UNMC ID want to wish each and everyone of you a happy, healthy holiday season and a wonderful start to 2019! Thank you for your continued support in our endeavor to bring you the latest news, updates and research from our amazing faculty & […]

Dec 31, 2018

Bacteriocidal versus Bacteriostatic: What Makes the Biggest Difference in VRE Bloodstream Infection?

An October 2018 publication in Critical Care Medicine by Chuang et al details a prospective study of adults in Taiwan, between 2010 -2015, aimed to assess all-cause mortality and rate of bloodstream clearance among patients with vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) treated with daptomycin (bacteriocidal) versus linezolid(bacteriostatic). Patients were treated with conventional daptomycin (6 to < 9 mg/kg […]

Dec 19, 2018

Saving SIRS? Discernment of Sepsis from Non-Infectious Syndromes in the ED

Upon patients’ arrival to the emergency department (ED), determining whether they do or do not have sepsis is difficult. Because of this, many patients receiving antibiotics ultimately are found to have a noninfectious cause of their syndrome. In order to try and improve detection of sepsis in the ED, Mearelli et al. completed a multicenter […]

Dec 10, 2018

Top 10 Things We Are Thankful for in ID – Letterman Style

Life is better with gratitude. Today, whether or not you celebrate Thanksgiving, we want to continue to show our gratitude and thankfulness to be able to help diagnose, prevent, treat, cure and even advance, the science of medicine. Now, let’s have a little fun! We are grateful for: 10. Hand washing with those cute seasonal […]

Nov 22, 2018

Earrings In Healthcare Workers: Friend or Foe?

Ear piercing among people, including healthcare workers, is a common trend. Katsuse et al, attempted to make a correlation between ear piercings and healthcare-associated infections. In order to prove this relationship, researchers sampled the earlobes and fingers of 200 nurses working at a university hospital. 128 of those nurses had pierced earlobes and 72 of […]

Nov 20, 2018

IDWeek 2018: Why We Still Don’t Wash Our Hands

At IDWeek 2018, the annual conference for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, I was struck by one simple truth. We are still talking about washing our hands, or in our professional lingo, hand hygiene. Hand hygiene is the simplest, most effective way to prevent infection. Most of us know this intuitively, without the science, […]

Oct 30, 2018

New Faculty Spotlight – Daniel Cramer, MSN, APRN, FNP-C

We are thrilled to have another member of our UNMC ID team. Read on to learn a little more about Daniel Cramer, who is joining our new Orthopedic Infectious Diseases team. Why did you choose to stay at UNMC? UNMC is home for me!  I completed my undergraduate degree here, as well as my graduate […]

Sep 7, 2018

UNMC ID’s Dr. Diana Florescu wins DANCE FOR A CHANCE

Back in May, we were thrilled to announce that Dr. Florescu was participating in YES Dance for a Chance Dance for a Chance raises awareness and money for Youth Emergency Services (YES) and the homeless youth of Omaha. There are hundreds of homeless youth in Omaha. Some of them have been emotionally, physically, or sexually abused, making […]

Sep 4, 2018