Tag: #LearnID

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

journal on table

Going Viral with West Nile  

As we get further into the summer, we are yet again nearing West Nile Virus season, and there are starting to be a few cases reported nationwide. Our senior ID fellow Dr. Lindsey Rearigh wrote an article outlining what to expect with West Nile Virus, how it is transmitted, diagnosed, and treated.  West Nile Virus […]

Aug 12, 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

Does de-escalation of anti-MRSA therapy for culture-negative pneumonia affect patient outcomes?

Nosocomial pneumonia is a common hospital-acquired infection and has a high mortality rate in the critically ill.  Because drug-resistant bacteria like Pseudomonas aeruginosa and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are commonly responsible for these infections, guidelines recommend broad-spectrum empirical therapy that includes anti-MRSA coverage.  Treatment is ideally de-escalated and refined based on culture results.  However, culture negative infections […]

Apr 22, 2019

Inter-Professional Relationships in HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis

We’re excited to feature a recent publication borne from student-faculty collaboration that highlights the importance of interdisciplinary care! Dr. Jordan Broekhuis, the lead author, is one of our former HIV Enhanced Medical Education Track (EMET) students who is now a surgery resident at Beth Israel Deaconess.  He completed his EMET work here at UNMC under […]

Apr 18, 2019

What to Expect in Antimicrobial Stewardship…Shorter is Better, Of Course!

The following was previously posted by Dr. Marcelin to SHEA Journal Club published online in February 2019. Electronic clinical decision support tools and rapid diagnostic testing have significantly impacted the way we practice Infectious Diseases. Despite these scientific gains, Antimicrobial Stewardship still requires an understanding of the behavioral science of prescribing. Prior studies have demonstrated […]

Feb 26, 2019

Prescribing in Pediatric Patients: Who is at Risk?

The following was previously posted by Dr. Marcelin to SHEA Journal Club published online in January 2019. In the inpatient setting, much of the broad-spectrum antibiotic prescribing occurs in the context of the sepsis syndrome, where uncertainty leads to overly broad empiricism. Development of antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative rods (high-risk GNRs) may complicate empiric treatment choices, and […]

Jan 31, 2019

Decisive De-labelling in Cancer Patients: Just what the Doctor Ordered

The following was previously posted by Dr. Marcelin to SHEA Journal Club published online in January 2019. Although 10% of Americans report penicillin allergies, 90% of those allergies are not substantiated. Up to 25% of patients living with cancer report penicillin allergies, but more than half of these are low risk and could tolerate beta-lactams. […]

Jan 16, 2019

SeptiCyte: Is It Ready for Prime-time?

The following is a summary of a recent ID Journal Club, presented and written by 2nd year ID Fellow Dr. Raj Karnatak: Sepsis defined as “life-threatening organ dysfunction due to the dysregulated host response to an infection” [1]. Sepsis most commonly results from a bacterial infection, or less frequently from a fungal or viral infection. […]

Jan 9, 2019

Does the Clostridium Smell Diffy? Even the Dogs Disagree…

The C. difficile sniffing dogs are back! There are several prior reports of individual dogs being trained to “sniff out” C. difficile. In a novel approach, the authors of this study trained two dogs simultaneously, and then compared interrater reliability between sniff attempts. They used toxigenic C. difficile frozen stool samples (GDH EIA and PCR […]

Nov 5, 2018