Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America
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Review
Update and overview of outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy regulations and reimbursement.
Outpatient care, including outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT), is increasingly seen by both clinicians and insurers as a safe, effective, and economical adjunct or alternative to hospitalization. Despite this, perhaps the least understood reimbursement and regulatory policies for health care services are those that apply to OPAT. We present a brief review and update of current rules and regulations relating to OPAT, with emphasis on areas of special interest to physicians serving as medical directors of home or ambulatory infusion programs or providing OPAT as an extension of their office practices.
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Although routine lumbar puncture (LP) is often recommended as part of the assessment of fever-associated seizures in children, accumulating evidence questions its value and reveals a decrease in its frequency. Our primary hypothesis was that children who present with a single seizure but with no clinical signs of meningism or coma do not require LP as part of initial diagnostic assessment. ⋯ Initial LP is unnecessary when careful clinical assessment indicates features of a simple febrile seizure.
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Candida species are the leading cause of invasive fungal infections in hospitalized children and are the third most common isolates recovered from patients with healthcare-associated bloodstream infection in the United States. Few data exist on risk factors for candidemia in pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) patients. ⋯ To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate independent risk factors and to determine a population of children in PICUs at high risk for developing candidemia. Future efforts should focus on validation of these risk factors identified in a different PICU population and development of interventions for prevention of candidemia in critically ill children.
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Current guidelines suggest that primary prophylaxis for Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (PcP) can be safely stopped in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients who are receiving combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) and who have a CD4 cell count >200 cells/microL. There are few data regarding the incidence of PcP or safety of stopping prophylaxis in virologically suppressed patients with CD4 cell counts of 101-200 cells/microL. ⋯ The incidence of primary PcP among patients who had virologically suppressed HIV infection, were receiving cART, and who had CD4 cell counts >100 cells/microL was low irrespective of prophylaxis use. Discontinuation of prophylaxis may be safe in patients with CD4 counts of 101-200 cells/microL and suppressed viral load.
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Editorial Comment
Clostridium difficile: (re)emergence of zoonotic potential.