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Isolating patients infected or colonized with vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) in a private room or cohort room to prevent hospital transmission is controversial.To evaluate the effect of a relaxed isolation policy for VRE-infected or colonized patients on healthcare-associated (HA) VRE bacteraemia in an acute care hospital with a predominantly shared-room setting.The incidence of HA VRE bacteraemia was compared during a private isolation era (October 2014-September 2017), a cohort isolation era (October 2017-June 2020), and a no isolation era (July 2020-June 2022). Using Poisson regression modelling, an interrupted time-series analysis was conducted to analyse level changes and trends in incidences of HA VRE bacteraemia for each era.The proportion of VRE-infected or -colonized patients staying in shared rooms increased from 18.3% in the private isolation era to 82.6% in the no isolation era (P0.001). There was no significant difference in the incidences of HA VRE bacteraemia between the private isolation era and the cohort isolation era (relative risk: 1.01; 95% confidence interval: 0.52-1.98; P = 0.977) or between the cohort isolation era and the no isolation era (0.99; 0.77-1.26; P = 0.903). In addition, there was no significant slope increase in the incidence of HA VRE bacteraemia between any of the eras.In a hospital with predominantly shared rooms, the relaxation of isolation policy did not result in increased HA VRE bacteraemia, when other infection control measures were maintained.

Recently, rapid phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) based on microscopic imaging analysis has been developed. The aim of this study was to determine whether implementation of antimicrobial stewardship programmes (ASP) based on rapid phenotypic AST can increase the proportion of patients with haematological malignancies who receive optimal targeted antibiotics during early periods of bacteraemia.This randomized controlled trial enrolled patients with haematological malignancies and at least one positive blood culture. Patients were randomly assigned 1:1 to conventional (n = 60) or rapid phenotypic (n = 56) AST. The primary outcome was the proportion of patients receiving optimal targeted antibiotics 72 hr after blood collection for culture.The percentage receiving optimal targeted antibiotics at 72 hr was significantly higher in the rapid phenotypic AST group (45/56, 80.4%) than in conventional AST group (34/60, 56.7%) (relative risk (RR) 1.42, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.09-1.83). The percentage receiving unnecessary broad-spectrum antibiotics at 72 hr was significantly lower (7/26, 12.5% vs 18/60, 30.0%; RR 0.42, 95% CI 0.19-0.92) and the mean time to optimal targeted antibiotic treatment was significantly shorter (38.1, standard deviation (SD) 38.2 vs 72.8, SD 93.0 hr; p 0.001) in the rapid phenotypic AST group. The mean time from blood collection to the AST result was significantly shorter in the rapid phenotypic AST group (48.3, SD 17.6 vs 83.1, SD 22.2 hr).ASP based on rapid phenotypic AST can rapidly optimize antibiotic treatment for bacteraemia in patients with haematological malignancy. Rapid phenotypic AST can improve antimicrobial stewardship in immunocompromised patients.

Acinetobacter baumannii is one of the major pathogens responsible for healthcare-associated infections, especially in intensive care units (ICUs).To evaluate the effect of room privatization in an ICU on the acquisition of carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii (CRAB).Between March and August 2017, a medical ICU was renovated from a multi-bed bay room to single rooms. Acquisition of CRAB was compared between patients admitted to the ICU over 18 months pre-renovation (September 2015 to February 2017) and post-renovation (September 2017 to February 2019). A Cox proportional hazard model was used with adjustment for demographics and comorbidities.Of the 901 patients, who contributed 8276 patient-days, 95 (10.5%) acquired CRAB during their ICU stay. The CRAB acquisition rate was significantly higher during the pre-renovation period (1.87 per 100 patient-days) than during the post-renovation period (0.39 per 100 patient-days) (P0.001). In the multi-variable Cox regression model, CRAB acquisition was significantly associated with the presence of a feeding tube (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR), 6.08; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.46-15.06; P0.001), continuous renal replacement therapy (aHR, 1.66; 95% CI, 1.09-2.53; P=0.019) and admission after renovation of the ICU to single rooms (aHR, 0.23; 95% CI, 0.12-0.41; P0.001).Renovation of ICUs to single rooms is an efficient strategy to prevent transmission of multi-drug-resistant organisms and hospital-acquired infections.

Objectives No randomized controlled trials have evaluated the comparative outcomes of cefazolin versus nafcillin for methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA) bacteraemia. Methods A prospective observational cohort study including all S. aureus bacteraemia was conducted at 10 hospitals. Patients (≥15 years) with MSSA bacteraemia who received cefazolin or nafcillin as definitive antibiotics were included. The rates of treatment failure (premature discontinuation of antibiotics because of adverse effects, switching of antibiotics because of clinical failure, all-cause mortality within 1 month, or recurrence) were compared between the cefazolin and nafcillin groups. Propensity score matching analyses were performed to balance the factors influencing the selection of antibiotics. Results Among the 242 included cases, the bones and joints (36.8%) were the most common sites of infection and 60.7% of the patients had sepsis. The overall treatment failure rate was 43.8% (106/242). All-cause mortality within 1 month was 6.2% (15/242). After propensity score matching, the treatment failure rate of cefazolin was lower than that of nafcillin (30.4% (24/79) vs. 49.4% (39/79), p 0.015) because of a higher rate of discontinuation caused by adverse events. When the data were limited to patients with sepsis, the treatment failure rates of both groups were not significantly different. Approximately 22% (24/110) of MSSA isolates exhibited a cefazolin-inoculum effect (CIE) that had significant impact on the failure rate and mortality of the cefazolin group. Conclusions Cefazolin might be recommended as an adequate and better-tolerated treatment for MSSA bacteraemia in the absence of CIE.

p -Phenylene biphenyltetracarboximide (BPDA-PDA) polyimide (PI) layers were grown on indium-tin oxide (ITO)-coated glass substrates by curing the PI precursor layer. The ionization energy, which was determined from the γ-focused ion beam (FIB) measurements and corresponds to the energy level of the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO), of the PI layer was 4.77 eV, and the optical energy gap obtained from the absorbance measurements was 3.51 eV. The energy levels of the HOMO and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital of the PI layer were determined on the basis of the FIB and absorbance measurements. These results can help in understanding the electronic structure of the BPDA-PDA PI/ITO heterostructures for organic light-emitting devices.

This paper is about how to treat the signals of accelerometers to recognize user gestures from detected signals from accelerometers after applying small accelerometers to handheld devices, and about how to precisely recognize gestures to detect user gestures. To use handheld devices in recognizing gestures, overheads arising from the process of recognizing gestures should be little and gestures should be effectively recognized in real operational environments. Therefore, signals detected from accelerometers were treated after classifying them into acceleration and dynamic acceleration, and signal patterns of accelerometers about simple gestures were analyzed. In addition, a device control module was created and its operating process was compared to that of a normal control device to evaluate the usability of gestures recognition. The result was that because gesture-based control is easy to use and can reduce preparation process to control for rapid system reaction, it is a proper user interface for handheld devices primarily used in mobile environments.