Mikrobiyol Bul
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Clostridium difficile-associated disease can be observed especially in hospitalized patients who use broad-spectrum antibiotics. The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of C. difficile as the causative agent of diarrhea in outpatients and inpatients. During January-December 2005, 45 outpatients and 46 inpatients (of them 11 were intensive care unit patients) who had developed diarrhea due to antibiotic use, were included to the study. ⋯ It was detected that 84.6% (11/13) of the patients had used ampicillin/sulbactam, 7.7% (1/13) used cotrimoxazole-SXT, and 7.7% (1/13) used macrolide antibiotics. The use of ampicillin/sulbactam was found statistically significant in development of diarrhea (p<0.05). Our data indicated that ELISA Toxin A+B is a reliable method with 100% specificity and sensitivity in the rapid diagnosis of C. difficile until the culture results were obtained, however, although specificity of Toxin A latex test is 100%, its use alone as a primary rapid diagnostic test was not recommended because of its low (30.7%) sensitivity.
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Comparative Study
[Differential diagnosis of bacterial and viral meningitis in childhood acute meningitis: a statistical model].
Acute bacterial meningitis (BM) which is a pediatric emergency with high mortality and morbidity, must be diagnosed and treated promptly. There is no unique method to prove or rule out the diagnosis of BM in a patient with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) findings consistent with BM but negative Gram stain and culture results. ⋯ Logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between BM and age, CPR, ESR, leukocyte count, CSF leukocyte, neutrophil, protein and glucose values. Based on CSF protein and neutrophil ratio which were found as independent variables, the regression model could predict the patients having BM with 95% and viral meningitis with 93.2% accuracy.