Healthcare-associated infections among patients in a surgery ward: Cross-sectional study

Background@#Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) among patients in surgical wards are serious complications that do not only affect surgical outcomes, but also increase medical care costs. @*Objective@#To determine the proportion of patients with HAIs in surgery wards and identify factors associated with HAIs. @*Design@#Cross-sectional study. @*Setting@#Department of Surgery, Southern Philippines Medical Center, from January 2016 to December 2016. @*Participants@#182 patients from different surgical wards. @*Main outcome measures@#Presence of HAI; prevalence odds ratios (POR) of having an HAI for selected factors. @*Main results@#There were 182 patients (122 males and 62 females; mean age 34.89 ± 20.56 years) included in this report. Seventeen patients (9.34%) developed HAI during admission. Among patients who underwent surgery (n=126), having an HAI was significantly associated with: operation time >180 minutes (adjusted POR=15.18; 95% CI 3.92 to 58.69; p=0.0001), >4 surgical team members (adjusted POR=5.42; 95% CI 1.37 to 21.41; p=0.0158), general anesthesia (adjusted POR=10.46; 95% CI 1.29 to 84.63; p=0.0278), and use of inhalational anesthesia (adjusted POR=11.81; 95% CI 1.45 to 96.08; p=0.0210). @*Conclusion@#In this study, 9.34% of patients had an HAI during admission. Long hospital stay, use of indwelling medical devices, long surgical procedures, high number of surgical team members during surgery, general anesthesia, and use of inhalational anesthesia are all associated with having an HAI.

Micro-scale surface-patterning influences biofilm formation

The formation of biofilms on indwelling/implanted medical devices is a common problem. One of the approaches used to prevent biofilm formation on medical devices is to inhibit bacterial attachment by modification of the synthetic polymers used to fabricate the device. In this work, we assessed how micro-scale features (patterns) imprinted onto the surface of silicone elastomer similar to that used for medical applications influenced biofilm formation by Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Patterns were transferred from a multi-patterned oxidized silicon-wafer master-template to silicone elastomer. Features consisted of bars, squares, and circles each extending 0.51 µm above the surface. Feature sizes ranged between 1.78 and 22.25 µm. Distances separating features ranged between 0.26 and 17.35 µm. Bacterial biofilm formation on discs cut from imprinted silicone elastomer was assessed by direct microscopic observation and quantified as the surface area covered by biofilm. Unpatterned silicone elastomer served as a control. Several of the micro-scale patterns imprinted into the silicone elastomer significantly reduced biofilm formation by each bacterium and interrupted biofilm continuity. Although there were differences in detail among strains, bacteria tended to attach in the area between features more than to the surface of the feature itself.

Microsatellites within genes and ESTs of the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas and their transferability in five other Crassostrea species

We developed 15 novel polymorphic microsatellites for the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas by screening genes and expressed sequence tags (ESTs) found in GenBank. The number of alleles per locus ranged from two to 24 with an average of 8.7, and the values of observed heterozygosity (Ho) and expected heterozygosity (He) ranged from 0.026 to 0.750 and from 0.120 to 0.947, respectively. No significant pairwise linkage disequilibrium was detected among loci and eight loci conformed to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Transferability of the markers was examined on five other Crassostrea species and all the markers were amplified successfully in at least one species. These new microsatellites should be useful for population genetics, parentage analysis and genome mapping studies of C. gigas and closely related species. The nine markers identified from known genes are expected to be especially valuable for comparative mapping as type I markers.