Quality Reporting on Dialysis Water Testing and Dialysis Machine Disinfection

Practice Problem: Kidney failure affects 0.1% - 0.2% of the general population, yet the dialysis expenditure is 5%-7% of total healthcare budget spending. The increased incidence of chronic disease will result in more End Stage Renal Disease patients on dialysis along with more comorbidities. Thus, it is imperative for health organizations to have well established protocols and guidelines to manage the care of the dialysis patient. PICOT: The PICOT question that guided this project was: in patients receiving dialysis at an acute care dialysis unit (P), does utilizing a Standardized Policy for Quality Reporting on Dialysis Water Testing and Dialysis Machine Disinfection (I) compared to no policy (C) affect infection rates within eight weeks? Evidence: The evidence supported the need to optimize microbiological surveillance procedures, test pure water to ensure infection prevention practices, and ensure water safety protocols with monitoring and testing. Intervention: Collaboration with the organization’s dialysis peer group, regional lab, infection prevention, and dialysis educator helped to develop a regional standardized policy, as well as build the water testing standards into the regional lab’s information technology platform. Outcome: A regional standardized policy based on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) standards was developed and integrated into the regional lab’s information technology platform in efforts to ensure quality of care and safety. The project positively impacted clinical practice and improved infection rates, in which staff were compliant and competent after being trained. Conclusion: It is important to have strategies to reduce the risk of infection associated with dialysis; therefore, the project emphasized the importance of having a standardized policy to mitigate infections and ensure both quality of care and patient safety

The importance of polarizability: comparison of models of carbon disulphide in the ionic liquids [C1C1im][NTf2] and [C4C1im][NTf2].

The local environment of CS2 and in solution in two ionic liquids ([C1C1im][NTf2] and [C4C1im][NTf2]) are investigated by atomistic simulation and compared with that in neat CS2. The intermolecular vibrational densities of states of CS2 are calculated and compared with experimental OHD-RIKES spectra. The fair agreement of the results from solutions but poor agreement of the results from neat CS2 suggest that while collective effects are unimportant in solutions, they have a major effect on the OHD-RIKES spectrum of neat CS2. Comparing polarizable and unpolarizable models for CS2 emphasizes the importance of polarizability in determining local structure.Support to ELQ was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant CHE 1153077.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the Royal Society of Chemistry via http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C6CP01752

New fluorescent pH sensors based on covalently linkable PET rhodamines

Financial support from the Austrian Science Fund FWF (Project no. P 21192-N17) and from the Spanish Ministry of Education (Joint Project no. AT2009-0019) is gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Graz University of Technology, particularly Jana Rentner, MSc for kind support in performing LC-MS. Furthermore, we thank Johann Pichler, Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, Graz University of Technology, for acquiring 19F-NMR spectra, as well as Sarah Schiller and Stefan Schobesberger.A new class of rhodamines for the application as indicator dyes in fluorescent pH sensors is presented. Their pH-sensitivity derives from photoinduced electron transfer between non-protonated amino groups and the excited chromophore which results in effective fluorescence quenching at increasing pH. The new indicator class carries a pentafluorophenyl group at the 9-position of the xanthene core where other rhodamines bear 2-carboxyphenyl substituents instead. The pentafluorophenyl group is used for covalent coupling to sensor matrices by “click” reaction with mercapto groups. Photophysical properties are similar to “classical” rhodamines carrying 2′-carboxy groups. pH sensors have been prepared with two different matrix materials, silica gel and poly(2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate). Both sensors show high luminescence brightness (absolute fluorescence quantum yield ΦF≈0.6) and high pH-sensitivity at pH 5–7 which makes them suitable for monitoring biotechnological samples. To underline practical applicability, a dually lifetime referenced sensor containing Cr(III)-doped Al2O3 as reference material is presented.Austrian Science Fund (FWF) P 21192-N17Spanish Government AT2009-001