December 2010
100 posts
NPSF Creates First Professional Society and... →
The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF), a nonprofit specializing in advancing safe patient care, is creating a groundbreaking new membership program for patient safety professionals that will…
Crothall Healthcare Selects 3M Clean-Trace for... →
Crothall Healthcare, a premier provider of support services to healthcare clients, announces its preferred partnership arrangement with 3M to kick off its enhanced approach to infection control….
Year in Review: Healthcare Worker and Patient... →
With 2010 coming to a close quickly, ICT presents the top news items and articles relating to healthcare worker and/or patient safety, ranked in order of popularity based on Web clicks by ICT…
Scientists Identify Key Interaction in Hepatitis C... →
Scientists from the Florida campus of the Scripps Research Institute have identified a molecular interaction between a structural hepatitis C virus protein (HCV) and a protein critical to viral…
Consortium Learns from Nature to Produce New... →
Five new U.S., European and Japanese companies join A*STAR’s Industrial Consortium On Nanoimprint (ICON) to engineer marine life-inspired antimicrobial surfaces for use on medical devices and other…
Year in Review: Surveillance and Epidemiology →
With 2010 coming to a close quickly, ICT presents the top news items and articles of 2010 relating to surveillance and epidemiology, ranked in order of popularity based on Web clicks by ICT readers….
Google thanks SkinWearUSA →
Cast: SkinWearUSA
Year in Review: Hand Hygiene →
With 2010 coming to a close quickly, ICT presents the top news items and articles of 2010 relating to hand hygiene, ranked in order of popularity based on Web clicks by ICT readers.
Healing Wounds With Silver Preps →
Researchers have identified a better method of using silver to treat infected wounds. They report their findings in the December 2010 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy….
Medline University Free Online Clinical Education... →
Medline University (MU), Medline Industries, Inc.’s free online clinical education resource, is expanding its reach to thousands more clinicians with the release today of an application accessible…
CDC Offers Guidance on Evaluation of Environmental... →
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released guidance for programs to optimize the thoroughness of cleaning of high-touch surfaces. The guidance recommends a two-level program…
Cintas Announces Top 11 Infection Prevention... →
Cintas, the sponsor of Infection Prevention for Dummies and a leading supplier of microfiber and infection prevention programs, today announced the top 11 infection prevention trends for 2011. The…
Trained Rats Increased Tuberculosis Detection... →
Trained giant African rats increased positive TB detection rates by 44 percent over microscopy, the most commonly-used technique for diagnosing TB, according to a new study released in the December…
Healthmark Offers Free Continuing Education on... →
Healthmark Industries Co. offers free continuing education at Crazy4Clean.com. Become an expert of the key steps in cleaning surgical instruments and have fun at the same time. Follow and direct the…
UV-C Device Reduces Pathogens in Hospital Patient... →
Results of an eight-month hospital study, “Room Decontamination with UV Radiation,” were published in the October 2010 issue of “Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.” The study evaluated the…
Biomedical Engineer Outsmarts HIV →
It is estimated that 38 million people worldwide are currently infected with HIV and that 4.1 million more are added each year. For scientists to design treatment therapies that are effective over…
Non-Chemical Water Treatments Fail to Prevent... →
Non-chemical treatment systems are touted as environmentally conscious stand-ins for such chemicals as chlorine when it comes to cleaning the water-based air-conditioning systems found in many large…
Researchers Advise Evaluating Post-Discharge Risks... →
Rupak Datta, MPH, and Susan S. Huang, MD, MPH, from the Division of Infectious Diseases and Health Policy Research Institute at the University of California Irvine School of Medicine, encourage…
Cholera Strain in Haiti Matches Bacteria from... →
A team of researchers from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital, with others from the United States and Haiti, has determined that the strain of…
Clean Hands Equal a Healthy Body →
According to Wikipedia, handshaking was practiced as long ago as the 5th century BCE. That’s 25 centuries of passing germs around by hand. People did wash their hands in ancient times. Some religious…
HAI Rate in Developing Countries Could be More... →
Benedetta Allegranzi MD, of the First Global Patient Safety Challenge, WHO Patient Safety, Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues assessed the epidemiology of endemic healthcare-associated infection…
Researchers Develop Non-RFID Hand Hygiene... →
Philip M. Polgreen, MD, from the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, and colleagues, have developed a method for automatically tracking the use of hand hygiene dispensers before…
Scientists Identify New Step in Activation of... →
Johns Hopkins scientists have identified a previously unrecognized step in the activation of infection-fighting white blood cells, the main immunity troops in the body’s war on bacteria, viruses and…
Study Suggests Cranberry Juice Not Effective... →
Drinking cranberry juice has been recommended to decrease the incidence of urinary tract infections, based on observational studies and a few small clinical trials. However, a new study published in…
As Elderly Population Increases, the Toll of... →
The American Lung Association released its latest health disparity report today, “Missed Opportunities: Influenza and Pneumonia Vaccination in Older Adults,” in an effort to eliminate disparities in…
Cholera Strain Evolves New Mechanism for Causing... →
New clinical strains of cholera appear to have evolved a distinctly different mechanism to cause the same disease according to research published in the current issue of the online journal mBio®….
Immune System Changes Linked to IBD Revealed →
Scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have discovered some of the key molecular events in the immune system that contribute to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The…
Share Your Opinion, Win a Gift Card →
More than 1,800 infection preventionists from all walks of life have joined ICTalk, which is ICT’s online community designed to facilitate dialogue about infection prevention and control-related…
HAIs Included in HHS Health Promotion and Disease... →
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has unveiled Healthy People 2020, the nation’s new 10-year goals and objectives for health promotion and disease prevention, and…
Researchers Devise Computer Model for Projecting... →
Researchers have developed a statistical model for projecting how many people will get sick from seasonal influenza based on analyses of flu viruses circulating that season. The research, conducted…
WHO Endorses New Rapid TB Test →
The World Health Organization (WHO)’s endorsement of the rapid test, which is a fully automated NAAT (nucleic acid amplification test) follows 18 months of rigorous assessment of its field…
University of South Florida Infectious Disease... →
As an innovator in infectious disease prevention and patient safety, the University of South Florida College of Medicine’s Division of Infectious Disease and International Medicine is instituting…
Cases Continue to Climb, But Fewer Patients are... →
The number of cholera cases continues to grow in Haiti, but a smaller proportion of people who become ill are now dying from the disease, according to data released this week. In the first weeks of…
Are Depressed People Too Clean? →
In an effort to pinpoint potential triggers leading to inflammatory responses that eventually contribute to depression, researchers are taking a close look at the immune system of people living in…
Near-Lethal Bout of Swine Flu Successfully Treated... →
According to the critical care experts at the Johns Hopkins Hospital who treated him, Allen Bagents, 24, of Arlington, Va., is the least likely person anyone ever expects to get sick, let alone…
CareFusion Launches Respiratory Airway Adapter to... →
CareFusion announces the launch of Verso™ 90 adapter, a component that enables uninterrupted access to a ventilated patient’s airway without having to disconnect the patient from the ventilator….
Open Surgery Reduces Infection Risk for Some... →
Deep organ space infections are expensive to treat – to the tune of $50,000. And that figure doesn’t begin to account for unrealized income (due to missed work) and other incalculable costs, like…
Engineer Identifies New Concerns for Antibiotic... →
When an antibiotic is consumed, researchers have learned that up to 90 percent passes through a body without metabolizing. This means the drugs can leave the body almost intact through normal bodily…
Milestone in Fight Against Deadly Disease Achieved →
Scientists at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (Seattle BioMed) and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have reached a major milestone in the effort to wipe out some of the most…
Using ATP in Healthcare Settings →
Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is an enzyme that is present in all living cells, and an ATP monitoring system can detect the amount of organic matter that remains after cleaning an environmental…
Bioactive Peptides Found to Promote Wound Healing →
Newly created bioactive peptides promote wound healing through the growth of new blood vessels and epithelial tissue, such as skin. These wound-healing peptides, synthesized by researchers at the…
VHP Used to Interrupt Acinetobacter Transmission... →
Amy Ray, MD, MPH, from the Division of Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine at University Hospitals Case Medical Center, and colleagues, report that environmental decontamination using vaporized…
New TIDI Glove Products Added to Novation Contract →
TIDI Products LLC, a manufacturer of single-use infection prevention products for medical and dental markets, has added three new gloves to its Novation LLC contract. The gloves include the 18 mil…
Nanoparticle Gives Antimicrobial Ability to Fight... →
By Brian Wallheimer A Purdue University research team developed a nanoparticle that can hold and release an antimicrobial agent as needed for extending the shelf life of foods susceptible to Listeria…
Teleflex to Focus on Patient Safety at Conference →
Teleflex Incorporated will showcase a number of respiratory products designed to help providers minimize risk and maximize outcomes for their patients at the annual AARC International Respiratory…
MedPro Safety Products Receives FDA Market... →
MedPro Safety Products, Inc., a developer of transformational technologies that enable safer medication delivery and blood collection, announces that its passive safety winged blood collection set…
Forced Air Blowers Frequently Contaminated, Emit... →
A peer-reviewed study in the latest issue of American Journal of Infection Control concludes that forced-air warming (FAW) blowers are usually contaminated with microorganisms and frequently emit…
Influenza Virus Strains Show Increasing Drug... →
Two new studies raise public health concerns about increasing antiviral resistance among certain influenza viruses, their ability to spread, and a lack of alternative antiviral treatment options. The…
Industry Helps Infection Preventionists Address... →
In ICT’s first-ever State of the Industry Report presented earlier this year, survey respondents reported that 77 percent of them participate regularly or frequently in educational events such as…
Scientists Consider Prospects for a Universal... →
The costly, time-consuming process of making, distributing and administering millions of seasonal flu vaccines would become obsolete if researchers could design a vaccine that confers decades-long…