Category: Journal Club

Blood culture contamination–it’s a big deal

Blood cultures are a key diagnostic test to detect bacteremia and appropriately treat patients with sepsis and are performed approximately 30 million times in the United States yearly. Unfortunately, contamination of blood cultures occurs in the 0.5% to 5% of samples (approximately 25% of positive blood cultures are due to contamination) which leads to inappropriate […]

Jan 21, 2020

PharmToExamTable: What do we know about Etravirine for HIV?

Recently, several of our HIV pharmacist colleagues in our Division of Infectious Diseases at UNMC/Nebraska Medicine, published an invited review in Clinical Pharmacokinetics entitled: Clinical Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of Etravirine: An Updated Review.  The first author, Dr. Josh Havens PharmD, wrote this summary describing the review article. What prompted the review? This was an invited […]

Dec 17, 2019

Unpacking the new IDSA Community-Acquired Pneumonia guidelines

We are always excited to have our ID fellows provide guest blog posts. Second year ID fellow Dr. Lindsey Rearigh (follow her on Twitter @LRearigh) was recently on her Antimicrobial Stewardship rotation and reviewed the latest published guidelines for Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAP).  The American Thoracic Society (ATS) and Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) recently […]

Dec 10, 2019

Journal Club – Stewardship in Community Hospitals: How should we spend our limited resources? 

Stewardship in Community Hospitals: How should we spend our limited resources?  The following is a review by our ID Fellowship Program Director Dr. Trevor Van Schooneveld from our last Infection Control/Antimicrobial Stewardship Journal Club. He discussed the article by Anderson et al: Feasibility of Core Antimicrobial Stewardship Interventions in Community Hospitals. JAMA Network Open.  2019;2(8):e199369.   Antimicrobial stewardship is […]

Sep 9, 2019

Treatment of Osteomyelitis – What’s the Evidence for our Strategies?

New UNMC ID publication alert! #ReadUNMCID Recently, the newest member of our Division of Infectious Diseases at UNMC/Nebraska Medicine, Dr. Nicolas Cortes-Penfield published an invited review in Open Forum Infectious Diseases entitled: The History of Antibiotic Treatment of Osteomyelitis.  Dr. Cortes-Penfield wrote this summary describing the review article, which was commissioned after he published a […]

Aug 29, 2019

How Clean is the Hub?

New UNMC ID publication alert! #ReadUNMCID Recently, several members of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UNMC/Nebraska Medicine published a study in American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC) entitled: Microbial colonization of intravascular catheter connectors in hospitalized patients. Drs. Richard Hankins (former ID fellow, class of 2019), and Kelly Cawcutt (Associate Medical Director of Infection […]

Aug 19, 2019

Inpatient Diarrheal Illness…Don’t Flush your Money: Save it with Diagnostic Stewardship!

Recently, a multidisciplinary team at UNMC published a diagnostic stewardship study in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology (ICHE) entitled: Hardwiring diagnostic stewardship using electronic ordering restrictions for gastrointestinal pathogen testing, that prompted a press release from The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), and a feature on an upcoming ICHE podcast episode. Drs. Jasmine Marcelin and Trevor Van […]

Jul 1, 2019

Do you really need to test the poo? Diagnostic stewardship for (outpatient) diarrheal illness

Rapid molecular testing has changed the landscape of diagnostic approaches to many infectious disease syndromes, including diarrheal illnesses. These panels typically have the capacity to diagnose multiple organisms in one test. The FilmArray gastrointestinal pathogen panel (BioFire) tests 22 stool pathogens. Despite the impact of improved clinical efficiency, these tests are often expensive, especially in […]

May 28, 2019

The Antimicrobial Stewardship Program: Keeper of the S. aureus bacteremia Checklist Manifesto

Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB) is a serious and sometimes devastating infection. There are established guidelines for optimal management, and more recently, numerous studies have shown the benefits of Infectious Diseases consultation, including improving guideline-adherent management, and reducing hospital stays, 30-day readmissions, and in-hospital mortality. Pharmacist-driven initiatives embedded within the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (ASP) have also […]

May 10, 2019

When you see CRE: Add Equal Parts Antimicrobial Stewardship and Infection Control

The following was previously posted by Dr. Marcelin to SHEA Journal Club published online in April 2019. Dealing with carbapenem resistant organisms presents both an antimicrobial stewardship and infection control problem. Richter et al. aimed to predict risk factors for carbapenem resistance among Gram-negative rods (CR-GNR). The authors were particularly interested in whether differences exist […]

May 2, 2019