Probiotics versus antibiotic decontamination of the digestive tract: infection and mortality

Purpose: Selective decontamination of the digestive tract (SDD) has been shown to decrease the infection rate and mortality in intensive care units (ICUs); Lactobacillus plantarum 299/299v plus fibre (LAB) has been used for infection prevention and does not harbour the potential disadvantages of antibiotics. The objective was to assess whether LAB is not inferior to SDD in infection prevention. Methods: Two hundred fifty-four consecutive ICU patients with expected mechanical ventilation ≥48 h and/or expected ICU stay ≥72 h were assigned to receive SDD: four times daily an oral paste (polymyxin E

Liverpool telescope 2: a new robotic facility for rapid transient follow-up

The Liverpool Telescope is one of the world's premier facilities for time domain astronomy. The time domain landscape is set to radically change in the coming decade, with surveys such as LSST providing huge numbers of transient detections on a nightly basis; transient detections across the electromagnetic spectrum from other facilities such as SVOM, SKA and CTA; and the era of `multi-messenger astronomy', wherein events are detected via non-electromagnetic means, such as gravitational wave emission. We describe here our plans for Liverpool Telescope 2: a new robotic telescope designed to capitalise on this new era of time domain astronomy. LT2 will be a 4-metre class facility co-located with the LT at the Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos on the Canary island of La Palma. The telescope will be designed for extremely rapid response: the aim is that the telescope will take data within 30 seconds of the receipt of a trigger from another facility. The motivation for this is twofold: firstly it will make it a world-leading facility for the study of fast fading transients and explosive phenomena discovered at early times. Secondly, it will enable large-scale programmes of low-to-intermediate resolution spectral classification of transients to be performed with great efficiency. In the target-rich environment of the LSST era, minimising acquisition overheads will be key to maximising the science gains from any follow-up programme. The telescope will have a diverse instrument suite which is simultaneously mounted for automatic changes, but it is envisaged that the primary instrument will be an intermediate resolution, optical/infrared spectrograph for scientific exploitation of transients discovered with the next generation of synoptic survey facilities. In this paper we outline the core science drivers for the telescope, and the requirements for the optical and mechanical design

Surviving Sepsis Campaign: International guidelines for management of severe sepsis and septic shock: 2008

SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Urinary tract infection analysis in a spinal cord injured population undergoing rehabilitation-how to treat?

Study design: Cross sectional study, including 38 outpatients. Standardized questionnaire was used and urine cultures were performed. Objectives: To study spinal cord-injured (SCI) patients bladder management, clinical aspects that symptomatic urinary tract infection (SUTI) may present and asymptomatic bacteriuria (AB) incidence with its antimicrobial susceptibility profile. Setting: Spinal cord injury outpatient rehabilitation clinic. Results: Clean intermittent catheterization is used by 71% of the patients. SUTI may have atypical clinical presentation (shivers, spasticity increase, headaches). In total, 65.7% (N = 25) of the patients presented AB. Among these, the microorganisms isolated were resistant mainly to Ampicillin, Sulfamethoxazole-Trimethoprim and Norfloxacin, whose resistance rates were, respectively 73.3%, 60% and 33.3%. Conclusion: Special attention should be given to possible atypical symptoms for SUTI. Although a small amount of urine samples was analyzed, resistance rates against Ampicillin, Sulfamethoxazole-Trimethoprim, Ciprofloxacin and Nitrofurantoin appear to be higher among SCI patients compared to the general population, thus demonstrating the need for continuous monitoring of microorganisms susceptibility, in order to avoid therapeutic failure when dealing with this specific population. Spinal Cord (2013) 51, 193-195; doi:10.1038/sc.2012.104; published online 11 September 201251319319