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This multisociety guidance was endorsed by SHEA, APIC, IDSA, PALTmed, and AGS. It provides recommendations for infection prevention and control (IPC) in the context of the complexity of nursing home care in the United States: increased medical acuity of residents, the spread of multidrug-resistant organisms, and the threat of emerging pathogens. Recommendations and implementation suggestions address IPC leadership, staffing, and resources, healthcare personnel and residents‘ adherence to precautions and effective hand hygiene, outbreak preparedness, training, occupational health, cleaning and disinfection in the care environment, and the involvement of IPC in the facility. The guidance also addresses the challenges of maintaining a home-like care space while sustaining necessary IPC measures. The guidance covers the role of regulatory bodies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It should serve as a resource for IPC program leaders in nursing homes who are aiming to enhance infection prevention efforts.
Antipsychotic (AP) medication in individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P) is not routinely recommended by clinical guidelines but is commonly prescribed. Since little is known about the predictors of AP inception in CHR-P, we analyzed data from two observational cohorts.
Methods
To avoid baseline predictors being confounded by previous treatment, participants were selected for analysis from the 764 participants at CHR-P enrolled in NAPLS-2 and the 710 enrolled in NAPLS-3 by excluding those with lifetime histories of AP use. Baseline clinical variables available in both studies were employed as predictors of subsequent AP inception over the next 6 months in univariable and multivariable analyses.
Results
Preliminary analyses indicated no important effects of sample. The final combined population included 79 AP inception participants and 580 participants who did not have AP inception. The AP medications most commonly prescribed were risperidone, aripiprazole, and quetiapine. Univariable analyses identified seven significant predictors of AP inception. The final logistic regression model including these variables was highly significant (χ2 = 36.53, df = 7, p = <0.001). Three variables (current major depression, fewer education years, and current benzodiazepine use) emerged as significant independent predictors of AP inception.
Conclusion
This study is the first to determine baseline characteristics that predict subsequent AP initiation in CHR-P. Some AP use in CHR-P appears to be intended as augmentation of antidepressant treatment for comorbid major depression. Some prescribers may not have detected the attenuated positive symptoms characteristic of CHR-P since their severity did not significantly predict AP inception.
Galaxy Zoo is an online project to classify morphological features in extra-galactic imaging surveys with public voting. In this paper, we compare the classifications made for two different surveys, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) imaging survey and a part of the Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), in the equatorial fields of the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. Our aim is to cross-validate and compare the classifications based on different imaging quality and depth. We find that generally the voting agrees globally but with substantial scatter, that is, substantial differences for individual galaxies. There is a notable higher voting fraction in favour of ‘smooth’ galaxies in the DESI+zoobot classifications, most likely due to the difference between imaging depth. DESI imaging is shallower and slightly lower resolution than KiDS and the Galaxy Zoo images do not reveal details such as disc features and thus are missed in the zoobot training sample. We check against expert visual classifications and find good agreement with KiDS-based Galaxy Zoo voting. We reproduce the results from Porter-Temple+ (2022), on the dependence of stellar mass, star formation, and specific star formation on the number of spiral arms. This shows that once corrected for redshift, the DESI Galaxy Zoo and KiDS Galaxy Zoo classifications agree well on population properties. The zoobot cross-validation increases confidence in its ability to compliment Galaxy Zoo classifications and its ability for transfer learning across surveys.
Aquatic ecosystems - lakes, ponds and streams - are hotspots of biodiversity in the cold and arid environment of Continental Antarctica. Environmental change is expected to increasingly alter Antarctic aquatic ecosystems and modify the physical characteristics and interactions within the habitats that they support. Here, we describe physical and biological features of the peripheral ‘moat’ of a closed-basin Antarctic lake. These moats mediate connectivity amongst streams, lake and soils. We highlight the cyclical moat transition from a frozen winter state to an active open-water summer system, through refreeze as winter returns. Summer melting begins at the lakebed, initially creating an ice-constrained lens of liquid water in November, which swiftly progresses upwards, creating open water in December. Conversely, freezing progresses slowly from the water surface downwards, with water at 1 m bottom depth remaining liquid until May. Moats support productive, diverse benthic communities that are taxonomically distinct from those under the adjacent permanent lake ice. We show how ion ratios suggest that summer exchange occurs amongst moats, streams, soils and sub-ice lake water, perhaps facilitated by within-moat density-driven convection. Moats occupy a small but dynamic area of lake habitat, are disproportionately affected by recent lake-level rises and may thus be particularly vulnerable to hydrological change.
We compared dissociative seizure specific cognitive behavior therapy (DS-CBT) plus standardized medical care (SMC) to SMC alone in a randomized controlled trial. DS-CBT resulted in better outcomes on several secondary trial outcome measures at the 12-month follow-up point. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate putative treatment mechanisms.
Methods
We carried out a secondary mediation analysis of the CODES trial. 368 participants were recruited from the National Health Service in secondary / tertiary care in England, Scotland, and Wales. Sixteen mediation hypotheses corresponding to combinations of important trial outcomes and putative mediators were assessed. Twelve-month trial outcomes considered were final-month seizure frequency, Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS), and the SF-12v2, a quality-of-life measure providing physical (PCS) and mental component summary (MCS) scores. Mediators chosen for analysis at six months (broadly corresponding to completion of DS-CBT) included: (a) beliefs about emotions, (b) a measure of avoidance behavior, (c) anxiety and (d) depression.
Results
All putative mediator variables except beliefs about emotions were found to be improved by DS-CBT. We found evidence for DS-CBT effect mediation for the outcome variables dissociative seizures (DS), WSAS and SF-12v2 MCS scores by improvements in target variables avoidance behavior, anxiety, and depression. The only variable to mediate the DS-CBT effect on the SF-12v2 PCS score was avoidance behavior.
Conclusions
Our findings largely confirmed the logic model underlying the development of CBT for patients with DS. Interventions could be additionally developed to specifically address beliefs about emotions to assess whether it improves outcomes.
The reading the mind in the eyes test (RMET) – which assesses the theory of mind component of social cognition – is often used to compare social cognition between patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. There is, however, no systematic review integrating the results of these studies. We identified 198 studies published before July 2020 that administered RMET to patients with schizophrenia or healthy controls from three English-language and two Chinese-language databases. These studies included 41 separate samples of patients with schizophrenia (total n = 1836) and 197 separate samples of healthy controls (total n = 23 675). The pooled RMET score was 19.76 (95% CI 18.91–20.60) in patients and 25.53 (95% CI 25.19–25.87) in controls (z = 12.41, p < 0.001). After excluding small-sample outlier studies, this difference in RMET performance was greater in studies using non-English v. English versions of RMET (Chi [Q] = 8.54, p < 0.001). Meta-regression analyses found a negative association of age with RMET score and a positive association of years of schooling with RMET score in both patients and controls. A secondary meta-analysis using a spline construction of 180 healthy control samples identified a non-monotonic relationship between age and RMET score – RMET scores increased with age before 31 and decreased with age after 31. These results indicate that patients with schizophrenia have substantial deficits in theory of mind compared with healthy controls, supporting the construct validity of RMET as a measure of social cognition. The different results for English versus non-English versions of RMET and the non-monotonic relationship between age and RMET score highlight the importance of the language of administration of RMET and the possibility that the relationship of aging with theory of mind is different from the relationship of aging with other types of cognitive functioning.
Cohort studies demonstrate that people who later develop schizophrenia, on average, present with mild cognitive deficits in childhood and endure a decline in adolescence and adulthood. Yet, tremendous heterogeneity exists during the course of psychotic disorders, including the prodromal period. Individuals identified to be in this period (known as CHR-P) are at heightened risk for developing psychosis (~35%) and begin to exhibit cognitive deficits. Cognitive impairments in CHR-P (as a singular group) appear to be relatively stable or ameliorate over time. A sizeable proportion has been described to decline on measures related to processing speed or verbal learning. The purpose of this analysis is to use data-driven approaches to identify latent subgroups among CHR-P based on cognitive trajectories. This will yield a clearer understanding of the timing and presentation of both general and domain-specific deficits.
Participants and Methods:
Participants included 684 young people at CHR-P (ages 12–35) from the second cohort of the North American Prodromal Longitudinal Study. Performance on the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB) and the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI-I) was assessed at baseline, 12-, and 24-months. Tested MCCB domains include verbal learning, speed of processing, working memory, and reasoning & problem-solving. Sex- and age-based norms were utilized. The Oral Reading subtest on the Wide Range Achievement Test (WRAT4) indexed pre-morbid IQ at baseline. Latent class mixture models were used to identify distinct trajectories of cognitive performance across two years. One- to 5-class solutions were compared to decide the best solution. This determination depended on goodness-of-fit metrics, interpretability of latent trajectories, and proportion of subgroup membership (>5%).
Results:
A one-class solution was found for WASI-I Full-Scale IQ, as people at CHR-P predominantly demonstrated an average IQ that increased gradually over time. For individual domains, one-class solutions also best fit the trajectories for speed of processing, verbal learning, and working memory domains. Two distinct subgroups were identified on one of the executive functioning domains, reasoning and problem-solving (NAB Mazes). The sample divided into unimpaired performance with mild improvement over time (Class I, 74%) and persistent performance two standard deviations below average (Class II, 26%). Between these classes, no significant differences were found for biological sex, age, years of education, or likelihood of conversion to psychosis (OR = 1.68, 95% CI 0.86 to 3.14). Individuals assigned to Class II did demonstrate a lower WASI-I IQ at baseline (96.3 vs. 106.3) and a lower premorbid IQ (100.8 vs. 106.2).
Conclusions:
Youth at CHR-P demonstrate relatively homogeneous trajectories across time in terms of general cognition and most individual domains. In contrast, two distinct subgroups were observed with higher cognitive skills involving planning and foresight, and they notably exist independent of conversion outcome. Overall, these findings replicate and extend results from a recently published latent class analysis that examined 12-month trajectories among CHR-P using a different cognitive battery (Allott et al., 2022). Findings inform which individuals at CHR-P may be most likely to benefit from cognitive remediation and can inform about the substrates of deficits by establishing meaningful subtypes.
Adolescents often experience heightened socioemotional sensitivity warranting their use of regulatory strategies. Yet, little is known about how key socializing agents help regulate teens’ negative emotions in daily life and implications for long-term adjustment. We examined adolescent girls’ interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) with parents and peers in response to negative social interactions, defined as parent and peer involvement in the teen’s enactment of emotion regulation strategies. We also tested associations between rates of daily parental and peer IER and depressive symptoms, concurrently and one year later. Adolescent girls (N = 112; Mage = 12.39) at temperamental risk for depressive disorders completed a 16-day ecological momentary assessment protocol measuring reactivity to negative social interactions, parental and peer IER, and current negative affect. Results indicated that adolescents used more adaptive strategies with peers and more maladaptive strategies with parents in daily life. Both parental and peer IER down-regulated negative affect, reflected by girls’ decreased likelihood of experiencing continued negative affect. Higher proportions of parental adaptive IER predicted reduced depressive symptoms one year later. Findings suggest that both parents and peers effectively help adolescent girls down-regulate everyday negative emotions; however, parents may offer more enduring benefits for long-term adjustment.
Clinical implementation of risk calculator models in the clinical high-risk for psychosis (CHR-P) population has been hindered by heterogeneous risk distributions across study cohorts which could be attributed to pre-ascertainment illness progression. To examine this, we tested whether the duration of attenuated psychotic symptom (APS) worsening prior to baseline moderated performance of the North American prodrome longitudinal study 2 (NAPLS2) risk calculator. We also examined whether rates of cortical thinning, another marker of illness progression, bolstered clinical prediction models.
Methods
Participants from both the NAPLS2 and NAPLS3 samples were classified as either ‘long’ or ‘short’ symptom duration based on time since APS increase prior to baseline. The NAPLS2 risk calculator model was applied to each of these groups. In a subset of NAPLS3 participants who completed follow-up magnetic resonance imaging scans, change in cortical thickness was combined with the individual risk score to predict conversion to psychosis.
Results
The risk calculator models achieved similar performance across the combined NAPLS2/NAPLS3 sample [area under the curve (AUC) = 0.69], the long duration group (AUC = 0.71), and the short duration group (AUC = 0.71). The shorter duration group was younger and had higher baseline APS than the longer duration group. The addition of cortical thinning improved the prediction of conversion significantly for the short duration group (AUC = 0.84), with a moderate improvement in prediction for the longer duration group (AUC = 0.78).
Conclusions
These results suggest that early illness progression differs among CHR-P patients, is detectable with both clinical and neuroimaging measures, and could play an essential role in the prediction of clinical outcomes.
N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor (NMDAR) hypofunction is hypothesised to underlie psychosis but this has not been tested early in illness.
Objectives
Our aim was to determine if NMDAR availability was lower in patients with first episode psychosis compared to healthy controls.
Methods
To address this, we studied 40 volunteers (21 patients with first episode psychosis and 19 matched healthy controls) using PET imaging with an NMDAR selective ligand, [18F]GE179, that binds to the ketamine binding site to index its distribution volume ratio (DVR) and volume of distribution (VT). Striatal glutamatergic indices (glutamate and Glx) were measured simultaneously using magnetic resonance spectroscopy imaging (1H-MRS).
Results
Hippocampal DVR, but not VT, was significantly lower in patients relative to controls (p=0.02, Cohen’s d=0.81; p=0.15, Cohen’s d=0.49), and negatively associated with total (rho=-0.47, p= 0.04), depressive (rho=-0.67, p=0.002), and general symptom severity (rho=-0.74, p<0.001). Exploratory analyses found no significant differences in other brain regions (anterior cingulate cortex, thalamus, striatum and temporal cortex). We found an inverse relationship between hippocampal NMDAR availability and striatal glutamate levels in people with first-episode psychosis (rho = -0.74, p <0.001) but not in healthy controls (rho = -0.22, p = 0.44).
Conclusions
These findings are consistent with the NMDAR hypofunction hypothesis and identify the hippocampus as a key locus for relative NMDAR hypofunction, although further studies should test specificity and causality.
Area-level residential instability (ARI), an index of social fragmentation, has been shown to explain the association between urbanicity and psychosis. Urban upbringing has been shown to be associated with decreased gray matter volumes (GMV)s of brain regions corresponding to the right caudal middle frontal gyrus (CMFG) and rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC).
Objectives
We hypothesize that greater ARI will be associated with reduced right posterior CMFG and rACC GMVs.
Methods
Data were collected at baseline as part of the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study. Counties where participants resided during childhood were geographically coded using the US Censuses to area-level factors. ARI was defined as the percentage of residents living in a different house five years ago. Generalized linear mixed models tested associations between ARI and GMVs.
Results
This study included 29 HC and 64 CHR-P individuals who were aged 12 to 24 years, had remained in their baseline residential area, and had magnetic resonance imaging scans. ARI was associated with reduced right CMFG (adjusted β = -0.258; 95% CI = -0.502 – -0.015) and right rACC volumes (adjusted β = -0.318; 95% CI = -0.612 – -0.023). The interaction terms (ARI X diagnostic group) in the prediction of both brain regions were not significant, indicating that the relationships between ARI and regional brain volumes held for both CHR-P and HCs.
Conclusions
Like urban upbringing, ARI may be an important social environmental characteristic that adversely impacts brain regions related to schizophrenia.
The fossil locality is situated on the farm “Uitzoek” in the Schoonspruit valley, near the town of Cornelia in the northeastern Free State Province of South Africa (Figures 12.1 and 12.2). The site consists of fossil-bearing valley-fill deposits within the Schoonspruit Valley. The hominin fossil and bulk of the fossil and artifact-bearing deposits of the site are dated by paleomagnetism to between 1.07 and 1.01 Ma (ages updated with respect to reversal ages of Singer, 2014), with other fossil and archeological deposits occurring to less than 780 ka (Brink et al., 2012). In older literature the Uitzoek site is referred to only as “Cornelia,” but it is in reality one of several fossil vertebrate and Stone Age archeological sites in the Schoonspruit valley and in the nearby Venterspruit drainage. These drainages fall within the northeastern part of the Vaal River catchment and flow northward into the Vaal River (Tooth et al., 2004; Figure 12.1).
OBJECTIVES/GOALS: To determine the impact of fertility preserving treatment (FPT) on likelihood of live birth in a cohort of reproductive-age women (18-45 y) after diagnosis of gynecologic malignancy or pre-malignancy METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We performed a retrospective cohort study of women ages 18-45 seen by gynecologic oncologists for newly diagnosed cervical cancer (CC), endometrial intraepithelial neoplasia (EIN) or endometrial cancer (EC), and borderline ovarian tumor (BOT) or invasive ovarian cancer (OC) at an academic center from 2015-2019, excluding women who completed childbearing. Our primary outcome was live birth after diagnosis and our exposure was FPT defined as services received by reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialists. We performed Pearsons Chi-squared and log binomial regression to assess association between live birth and FPT with adjustment for patient demographic and disease factors. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Out of 220 women (median age 36 y), most were White (54% vs. 25% Black) and 37% percent were diagnosed with BOT/OC (vs. 35% EIN/EC; 28% CC). After diagnosis of disease, 19% of women (n=41) had documented FPT and 8% of women (n= 17) had a live birth. By the end of follow-up, 6% of women who did not receive FPT had a live birth (n=11/178) compared to 15% of those who did (n=6/40, p=0.12). In univariate regression, women who received FPT were 2.4 times more likely to have a live birth after disease diagnosis that those who did not receive FPT (p-value = 0.06). However, after adjusting for age at diagnosis, relationship status, disease stage and disease type, the association between FPT and live birth was less robust (RR = 1.4, p-value = 0.6). DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: In this study, a minority of women had FPT or live births. Our data suggest that FPT benefit should be considered in context of age, relationship status, and disease characteristics for reproductive-age women diagnosed with gynecologic malignancies. Given the complexity, women should be offered referral for consultation with a fertility specialist.
Social cognition has not previously been assessed in treatment-naive patients with chronic schizophrenia, in patients over 60 years of age, or in patients with less than 5 years of schooling.
Methods
We revised a commonly used measure of social cognition, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), by expanding the instructions, using both self-completion and interviewer-completion versions (for illiterate respondents), and classifying each test administration as ‘successfully completed’ or ‘incomplete’. The revised instrument (RMET-CV-R) was administered to 233 treatment-naive patients with chronic schizophrenia (UT), 154 treated controls with chronic schizophrenia (TC), and 259 healthy controls (HC) from rural communities in China.
Results
In bivariate and multivariate analyses, successful completion rates and RMET-CV-R scores (percent correct judgments about emotion exhibited in 70 presented slides) were highest in HC, intermediate in TC, and lowest in UT (adjusted completion rates, 97.0, 72.4, and 49.9%, respectively; adjusted RMET-CV-R scores, 45.4, 38.5, and 34.6%, respectively; all p < 0.02). Stratified analyses by the method of administration (self-completed v. interviewer-completed) and by education and age (‘educated-younger’ v. ‘undereducated-older’) show the same relationship between groups (i.e. NC>TC>UT), though not all differences remain statistically significant.
Conclusions
We find poorer social cognition in treatment-naive than in treated patients with chronic schizophrenia. The discriminant validity of RMET-CV-R in undereducated, older patients demonstrates the feasibility of administering revised versions of RMET to patients who may otherwise be considered ineligible due to education or age by changing the method of test administration and carefully assessing respondents' ability to complete the task successfully.
Antipsychotics are widely used for treating patients with psychosis, and target threshold psychotic symptoms. Individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis are characterized by subthreshold psychotic symptoms. It is currently unclear who might benefit from antipsychotic treatment. Our objective was to apply a risk calculator (RC) to identify people that would benefit from antipsychotics.
Methods
Drawing on 400 CHR individuals recruited between 2011 and 2016, 208 individuals who received antipsychotic treatment were included. Clinical and cognitive variables were entered into an individualized RC for psychosis; personal risk was estimated and 4 risk components (negative symptoms-RC-NS, general function-RC-GF, cognitive performance-RC-CP, and positive symptoms-RC-PS) were constructed. The sample was further stratified according to the risk level. Higher risk was defined based on the estimated risk score (20% or higher).
Results
In total, 208 CHR individuals received daily antipsychotic treatment of an olanzapine-equivalent dose of 8.7 mg with a mean administration duration of 58.4 weeks. Of these, 39 (18.8%) developed psychosis within 2 years. A new index of factors ratio (FR), which was derived from the ratio of RC-PS plus RC-GF to RC-NS plus RC-CP, was generated. In the higher-risk group, as FR increased, the conversion rate decreased. A small group (15%) of CHR individuals at higher-risk and an FR >1 benefitted from the antipsychotic treatment.
Conclusions
Through applying a personal risk assessment, the administration of antipsychotics should be limited to CHR individuals with predominantly positive symptoms and related function decline. A strict antipsychotic prescription strategy should be introduced to reduce inappropriate use.
Background: Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) are endemic in the Chicago region. We assessed the regional impact of a CRE control intervention targeting high-prevalence facilities; that is, long-term acute-care hospitals (LTACHs) and ventilator-capable skilled nursing facilities (vSNFs). Methods: In July 2017, an academic–public health partnership launched a regional CRE prevention bundle: (1) identifying patient CRE status by querying Illinois’ XDRO registry and periodic point-prevalence surveys reported to public health, (2) cohorting or private rooms with contact precautions for CRE patients, (3) combining hand hygiene adherence, monitoring with general infection control education, and guidance by project coordinators and public health, and (4) daily chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG) bathing. Informed by epidemiology and modeling, we targeted LTACHs and vSNFs in a 13-mile radius from the coordinating center. Illinois mandates CRE reporting to the XDRO registry, which can also be manually queried or generate automated alerts to facilitate interfacility communication. The regional intervention promoted increased automation of alerts to hospitals. The prespecified primary outcome was incident clinical CRE culture reported to the XDRO registry in Cook County by month, analyzed by segmented regression modeling. A secondary outcome was colonization prevalence measured by serial point-prevalence surveys for carbapenemase-producing organism colonization in LTACHs and vSNFs. Results: All eligible LTACHs (n = 6) and vSNFs (n = 9) participated in the intervention. One vSNF declined CHG bathing. vSNFs that implemented CHG bathing typically bathed residents 2–3 times per week instead of daily. Overall, there were significant gaps in infection control practices, especially in vSNFs. Also, 75 Illinois hospitals adopted automated alerts (56 during the intervention period). Mean CRE incidence in Cook County decreased from 59.0 cases per month during baseline to 40.6 cases per month during intervention (P < .001). In a segmented regression model, there was an average reduction of 10.56 cases per month during the 24-month intervention period (P = .02) (Fig. 1), and an estimated 253 incident CRE cases were averted. Mean CRE incidence also decreased among the stratum of vSNF/LTACH intervention facilities (P = .03). However, evidence of ongoing CRE transmission, particularly in vSNFs, persisted, and CRE colonization prevalence remained high at intervention facilities (Table 1). Conclusions: A resource-intensive public health regional CRE intervention was implemented that included enhanced interfacility communication and targeted infection prevention. There was a significant decline in incident CRE clinical cases in Cook County, despite high persistent CRE colonization prevalence in intervention facilities. vSNFs, where understaffing or underresourcing were common and lengths of stay range from months to years, had a major prevalence challenge, underscoring the need for aggressive infection control improvements in these facilities.
Funding: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (SHEPheRD Contract No. 200-2011-42037)
Disclosures: M.Y.L. has received research support in the form of contributed product from OpGen and Sage Products (now part of Stryker Corporation), and has received an investigator-initiated grant from CareFusion Foundation (now part of BD).
Background: With the emergence of antibiotic resistant threats and the need for appropriate antibiotic use, laboratory microbiology information is important to guide clinical decision making in nursing homes, where access to such data can be limited. Susceptibility data are necessary to inform antibiotic selection and to monitor changes in resistance patterns over time. To contribute to existing data that describe antibiotic resistance among nursing home residents, we summarized antibiotic susceptibility data from organisms commonly isolated from urine cultures collected as part of the CDC multistate, Emerging Infections Program (EIP) nursing home prevalence survey. Methods: In 2017, urine culture and antibiotic susceptibility data for selected organisms were retrospectively collected from nursing home residents’ medical records by trained EIP staff. Urine culture results reported as negative (no growth) or contaminated were excluded. Susceptibility results were recorded as susceptible, non-susceptible (resistant or intermediate), or not tested. The pooled mean percentage tested and percentage non-susceptible were calculated for selected antibiotic agents and classes using available data. Susceptibility data were analyzed for organisms with ≥20 isolates. The definition for multidrug-resistance (MDR) was based on the CDC and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’s interim standard definitions. Data were analyzed using SAS v 9.4 software. Results: Among 161 participating nursing homes and 15,276 residents, 300 residents (2.0%) had documentation of a urine culture at the time of the survey, and 229 (76.3%) were positive. Escherichia coli, Proteus mirabilis, Klebsiella spp, and Enterococcus spp represented 73.0% of all urine isolates (N = 278). There were 215 (77.3%) isolates with reported susceptibility data (Fig. 1). Of these, data were analyzed for 187 (87.0%) (Fig. 2). All isolates tested for carbapenems were susceptible. Fluoroquinolone non-susceptibility was most prevalent among E. coli (42.9%) and P. mirabilis (55.9%). Among Klebsiella spp, the highest percentages of non-susceptibility were observed for extended-spectrum cephalosporins and folate pathway inhibitors (25.0% each). Glycopeptide non-susceptibility was 10.0% for Enterococcus spp. The percentage of isolates classified as MDR ranged from 10.1% for E. coli to 14.7% for P. mirabilis. Conclusions: Substantial levels of non-susceptibility were observed for nursing home residents’ urine isolates, with 10% to 56% reported as non-susceptible to the antibiotics assessed. Non-susceptibility was highest for fluoroquinolones, an antibiotic class commonly used in nursing homes, and ≥ 10% of selected isolates were MDR. Our findings reinforce the importance of nursing homes using susceptibility data from laboratory service providers to guide antibiotic prescribing and to monitor levels of resistance.
Background: Antibiotics are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in nursing homes; urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a frequent indication. Although there is no gold standard for the diagnosis of UTIs, various criteria have been developed to inform and standardize nursing home prescribing decisions, with the goal of reducing unnecessary antibiotic prescribing. Using different published criteria designed to guide decisions on initiating treatment of UTIs (ie, symptomatic, catheter-associated, and uncomplicated cystitis), our objective was to assess the appropriateness of antibiotic prescribing among NH residents. Methods: In 2017, the CDC Emerging Infections Program (EIP) performed a prevalence survey of healthcare-associated infections and antibiotic use in 161 nursing homes from 10 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Tennessee. EIP staff reviewed resident medical records to collect demographic and clinical information, infection signs, symptoms, and diagnostic testing documented on the day an antibiotic was initiated and 6 days prior. We applied 4 criteria to determine whether initiation of treatment for UTI was supported: (1) the Loeb minimum clinical criteria (Loeb); (2) the Suspected UTI Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation tool (UTI SBAR tool); (3) adaptation of Infectious Diseases Society of America UTI treatment guidelines for nursing home residents (Crnich & Drinka); and (4) diagnostic criteria for uncomplicated cystitis (cystitis consensus) (Fig. 1). We calculated the percentage of residents for whom initiating UTI treatment was appropriate by these criteria. Results: Of 248 residents for whom UTI treatment was initiated in the nursing home, the median age was 79 years [IQR, 19], 63% were female, and 35% were admitted for postacute care. There was substantial variability in the percentage of residents with antibiotic initiation classified as appropriate by each of the criteria, ranging from 8% for the cystitis consensus, to 27% for Loeb, to 33% for the UTI SBAR tool, to 51% for Crnich and Drinka (Fig. 2). Conclusions: Appropriate initiation of UTI treatment among nursing home residents remained low regardless of criteria used. At best only half of antibiotic treatment met published prescribing criteria. Although insufficient documentation of infection signs, symptoms and testing may have contributed to the low percentages observed, adequate documentation in the medical record to support prescribing should be standard practice, as outlined in the CDC Core Elements of Antibiotic Stewardship for nursing homes. Standardized UTI prescribing criteria should be incorporated into nursing home stewardship activities to improve the assessment and documentation of symptomatic UTI and to reduce inappropriate antibiotic use.
As pharmacological management is dissatisfying in many metabolic movement disorders, neurosurgical procedures have been attempted to alleviate the most disabling symptoms, which are often severe dystonia, chorea, tremor, and self-mutilating behavior. These neurosurgical procedures include ablative procedures and deep brain stimulation (DBS), typically targeting the basal ganglia.
Compulsory admission procedures of patients with mental disorders vary between countries in Europe. The Ethics Committee of the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) launched a survey on involuntary admission procedures of patients with mental disorders in 40 countries to gather information from all National Psychiatric Associations that are members of the EPA to develop recommendations for improving involuntary admission processes and promote voluntary care.
Methods.
The survey focused on legislation of involuntary admissions and key actors involved in the admission procedure as well as most common reasons for involuntary admissions.
Results.
We analyzed the survey categorical data in themes, which highlight that both medical and legal actors are involved in involuntary admission procedures.
Conclusions.
We conclude that legal reasons for compulsory admission should be reworded in order to remove stigmatization of the patient, that raising awareness about involuntary admission procedures and patient rights with both patients and family advocacy groups is paramount, that communication about procedures should be widely available in lay-language for the general population, and that training sessions and guidance should be available for legal and medical practitioners. Finally, people working in the field need to be constantly aware about the ethical challenges surrounding compulsory admissions.