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Extracorporeal blood purification is considered an adjunct therapy in critically ill patients with life-threatening conditions such as sepsis and septic shock. It consists of cytokine removal, removal of endotoxins, a combination of both, or the removal of pathogens themselves. The latter technique was introduced for clinical application very recently. This case study describes a case of a 69-year-old female lung transplant recipient patient with a persistent VV-ECMO-related septic deep vein thrombosis with continuous renal replacement therapy-dependent acute kidney injury initiated on the Seraph®-100 Microbind Affinity Filter in order to control the persistent bacteraemia with coagulase-negative staphylococci. Drug plasma concentrations (vancomycin, tacrolimus, and mycophenolic acid) were measured before and after the device to calculate absorber-related drug clearance., (© 2021 The Author(s). Published by S. Karger AG, Basel.)

Carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (CR-GNB) represent an increasing hazard in healthcare settings. A central question concerning the treatment of invasive infections caused by CR-GNB involves the use of combination therapy. Potential advantages of combination therapy include improved efficacy due to synergy, while the disadvantages include adverse events and increased antibiotic use with a potential drive towards resistance. Several observational studies have examined whether combination therapy offers an advantage over colistin/polymyxin monotherapy. We highlight the inherent limitations of these studies related to their observational design and sample size to show why they do not at present provide an answer to the question of combination versus monotherapy. This distinction is important to guide clinical practice until solid evidence has been obtained and to enable the recruitment of patients into randomized controlled trials. A few randomized controlled trials examining specific combinations have recently been completed or are ongoing. Currently, however, there is no evidence-based support for most combination therapies against CR-GNB, including colistin/carbapenem combination therapy., (© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

A systematic review and meta-analyses were performed to identify the risk factors associated with carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa and to identify sources and reservoirs for the pathogen. A systematic search of PubMed and Embase databases from 1 January 1987 until 27 January 2012 identified 1,662 articles, 53 of which were included in a systematic review and 38 in a random-effects meta-analysis study. The use of carbapenem, use of fluoroquinolones, use of vancomycin, use of other antibiotics, having medical devices, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, having underlying diseases, patient characteristics, and length of hospital stay were significant risk factors in multivariate analyses. The meta-analyses showed that carbapenem use (odds ratio [OR] = 7.09; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 5.43 to 9.25) and medical devices (OR = 5.11; 95% CI = 3.55 to 7.37) generated the highest pooled estimates. Cumulative meta-analyses showed that the pooled estimate of carbapenem use was stable and that the pooled estimate of the risk factor "having medical devices" increased with time. We conclude that our results highlight the importance of antibiotic stewardship and the thoughtful use of medical devices in helping prevent outbreaks of carbapenem-resistant P. aeruginosa.