Biological characteristics of Staphylococci circulating in hospitals in Nizhniĭ Novgorod

The study of 513 clinical isolates of staphylococci revealed that 8.4% of them were methicillin-resistant, their proportion in the isolates obtained from hospital patients being significantly higher than in the isolates obtained from patients in outpatient clinics (11.8% compared with 1.48%). Most of these isolates were coagulase-hegative staphylococci. The isolates obtained from urine, blood, discharge of the middle ear were in all cases represented by coagulase-negative staphylococci. Methicillin-resistant variants of S. aureus occurred mainly in discharge of surgical wounds and in sputum.     

Should more hospitals in the Netherlands provide PCI without on-site cardiac surgery?

One of the main conclusions of the recent recommendations of the Health Council of the Netherlands is that the serious problems with waiting lists and inadequate access to timely cardiac surgical interventions have disappeared. Therefore, policy makers as well as the medical profession have concluded that the number of hospitals providing cardiac surgery in the Netherlands should remain stable. In view of the fact that the number of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures has increased to around 30,000 a year and in the coming years will further increase to around 40,000 PCI procedures per year, a variety of practical solutions and a wide variety of opinions have been put forward.     

Centrifugal isolation of SARS-CoV-2: numerical simulation for purification of hospitals’ air

Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology - Coronavirus and its spread all over the world have been the most challenging crisis in 2020. Hospitals are categorized among the most vulnerable...     

Making secular ‘French’ medical ethics: transcendent morality and patient subjectivities in southern French hospitals

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with physicians and nurses working in two state-funded southern French hospitals, this article explores why and how medical care providers connected their everyday deliberations about patient care to what they considered to be distinctively French forms of medical responsibility. Many healthcare professionals saw French medical morality in opposition to ‘Anglo-Saxon’ discourses of individual autonomy and transactional choice. In contrast to such ‘transactionalism’, they insisted that ‘French’ ethics required limits that transcended particular circumstances. And yet it was difficult for doctors and nurses working in secular and increasingly neoliberal hospitals to argue against individual transactionalism in an overtly moral register, one that might appear religious and paternalist. Through a close look at two different cases – one in assisted reproduction and one in palliative care – I show how the language of folk psychoanalysis provided some health professionals with a way out of this impasse. Care providers used pseudo-psychoanalytic accounts of patient subjectivities to depict individuals as incapable of knowing, let alone ‘owning’ or rationally mastering, themselves. This, in turn, suggests that some aspects of French secularity may be far less Protestant and liberal than contemporary anthropological work tends to assume.     

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) with high resistance to mupirocin in hospitals of the Gdańsk region

Occurrence of high-level mupirocin resistance in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains isolated from 18 hospitals in Gdańsk area was determined. The study was carried out on 190 MRSA isolated in 1997-2000 from various clinical samples. The strains were tested for high-level mupirocin resistance by 200 micrograms mupirocin disc. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) for methicillin were estimated by agar dilution. Sensitivity to other antibiotics was determined in disc-diffusion method and to vancomycin in agar dilution method additionally. The strains were typed by set of 10 experimental phages and compared by the method of PCR-RFLP analysis of coagulase gen restriction fragment length polymorphism. There were low frequency of high-level mupirocin resistance in MRSA strains (4.7%) that were found only in 3 hospitals, in 6 patients. All of them were high-resistant also to methicillin and resistant to doxycyclin, gentamycin, erytromycin, klindamycin, ciprofloksacin, rifampicin, resistant or intermediate sensitive to fusidic acid but sensitive to vancomycin, teikoplanin and bacitracin. The origin all of the MRSA strains high-resistant to mupirocin probably was the same, except one strain, because they were belonged to one genetic type and possessed the same phage pattern.     

A comparative study of congenital toxoplasmosis between public and private hospitals from Uberlândia, MG, Brazil

The main purpose of the present study was to examine if there is difference in terms of incidence rates of congenital toxoplasmosis among populations assisted in public and private hospitals from Uberlandia, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. A total of 805 serum samples from cord blood were collected, being 500 from public hospital and 305 from private hospital, and all patients answered a questionnaire about pregnancy and newborns. An indirect enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was performed to detect IgG antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii and the positive samples were retested to verify the presence of specific IgM and IgA antibodies in a capture ELISA. We found significant differences among data from both hospitals with respect to maternal age, origin city, gestational age, number of visits to physicians during pregnancy, type of delivery, and birth weight. Seroprevalence of IgG antibodies against T. gondii for patients from public and private hospitals was 57.6% and 41.9% respectively, and this difference was statistically significant (P < 0.0001). In addition, the frequency of congenital toxoplasmosis measured by the presence of IgM and/or IgA antibodies toward T. gondii was exclusively located in samples from public hospital (0.8%), and no positive sample was seen in private hospital (0%). Considering that almost all babies suffering from congenital toxoplasmosis, if undiagnosed and untreated, will develop visual or neurological impairments by adulthood, the results presented herein emphasized the importance to accomplish screening programs for toxoplasmosis during pregnancy, particularly in the public hospitals, due to the expressive rate of congenital disease showed in the patients attended at these centers.     

Potential role of Neuregulin 1 and TNF-alpha (−308) polymorphism in schizophrenia patients visiting hospitals in Lahore,Pakistan

Schizophrenia is a chronic and disabling disease of the brain. Schizophrenic patients have auditory hallucinations, delusions and reduced social skills. Recent studies suggest that the genetic polymorphisms are linked with development of schizophrenia. Polymorphisms of schizophrenia susceptibility and different cytokine genes act as the genetic markers. The objective of our study is to examine the association between the neuregulin 1 and tumor necrosis factor-α (−308) gene polymorphism with schizophrenia. This association was performed on the basis of molecular biology to screen the mutations of neuregulin 1 and tumor necrosis factor-α (−308) gene in schizophrenic patients by polymorphism analysis. Statistical analysis of the observed data shows that there was an association (P = 0.003) between patient’s group and controls in terms of genotypes of single-nucleotide polymorphism 1 rather than single-nucleotide polymorphism 2 of neuregulin 1. So, heterozygous (adenine/guanine) allelic pattern can be a higher risk factor of schizophrenic patients. Polymorphism of tumor necrosis factor-α (−308) gene indicated frequent presence of homozygous (adenine/adenine) allelic pattern in patient’s group than in controls (P = 0.015). Statistical analysis indicates that the age distribution has significant difference between patient’s group and controls (P = 0.022) while the gender ratio is not significantly different (P = 0.366) between the two groups. It was concluded that in Pakistani population the neuregulin 1 and tumor necrosis factor-α (−308) genes are strongly associated with schizophrenia.     

Evaluation of thermal discomfort in Athens territory and its effect on the daily number of recorded patients at hospitals’ emergency rooms

Previous research has shown that temperature and humidity affect human health. However, only a few studies have examined the association of a biometeorological index, which combines several meteorological parameters and human physiology, with health outcomes. The aim of the present study is to assess the thermal discomfort in Athens city by using the Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) as well as to examine its association with the number of patients recorded at the emergency rooms of four main hospitals. Patients were selected based on their diagnosis during the summer season (June–August) from 1998 to 2004. Data included hourly values of meteorological parameters and daily numbers of patients who visited the emergency units of cardiology departments. Poisson regression models were applied using generalized estimating equations. A strong negative correlation between mean and maximum daily values of PMV and the number of emergency department visits was identified. More studies are needed to explore the association of this biometeorological index with health outcomes in other regions.     

Mold colonization during use of preservative-treated and untreated air filters, including HEPA filters from hospitals and commercial locations over an 8-year period (1996–2003)

High efficiency particulate arrestance (HEPA; 99.97% efficient at 0.3 m) filters, filters with ASHRAE particulate arrestance rating of 90–95% at 1 m (90–95% filters), and lower efficiency cellulosic-polyester filters from air conditioning systems in hospitals and commercial buildings were removed from the systems and examined microscopically for mold colonization. Cellulosic-type filters from systems with water entrainment problems typically were colonized, or became colonized upon incubation in moisture chambers. Species of Acremonium, Aspergillus, and Cladosporium were most common. With air filters of all types, treatment of filter media with an antimicrobial preservative tended to reduce or delay colonization. Mold colonization of HEPA and 90–95% filters was observed most often on the load surfaces, but two untreated HEPA filters were permeated with fungi, one with Aspergillus flavus, the other with Cladosporium sp. Air filters in heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, particularly those with chronic or periodic exposure to moisture, may serve as point sources for indoor molds.     

Molecular typing and antimicrobial susceptibility testing to six antimicrobials of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Clostridium difficile</Emphasis> isolates from three Czech hospitals in Eastern Bohemia in 2011–2012

In 2011–2012, a survey was performed in three regional hospitals in the Czech Republic to determine the incidence of Clostridium difficile infections (CDIs) and to characterize bacterial isolates. C. difficile isolates were characterized by PCR ribotyping, toxin genes detection, multiple-locus variable-number tandem-repeat analysis (MLVA), and antimicrobial susceptibility testing to fidaxomicin, vancomycin, metronidazole, clindamycin, LFF571, and moxifloxacin using agar dilution method. The incidence of CDI in three studied hospitals was 145, 146, and 24 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011 and 177, 258, and 67 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012. A total of 64 isolates of C. difficile was available for molecular typing and antimicrobial susceptibility testing. 60.9% of the isolates were classified as ribotype 176. All 41 isolates of ribotypes 176 and 078 were positive for the presence of binary toxin genes. Ribotype 176 also carried 18-bp deletion in the regulatory gene tcdC. Tested isolates of C. difficile were fully susceptible to vancomycin and metronidazole, whereas 65.1% of the isolates were resistant to moxifloxacin. MLVA results indicated that isolates from three different hospitals were genetically related, suggesting transmission between healthcare facilities.