Editor's Note Patients at Veterans Affairs hospitals who developed postoperative Clostridium difficile infections had a five times higher risk of mortality and a twelve times higher risk of morbidity in this study. This analysis of nearly 500,000 surgical procedures found that out of more than 1,800 patients who developed C…

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Editor's Note Some 120,000 more patients would get surgical site infections (SSIs) and 6,300 more would die from those infections if antibiotics given before surgery become 30% less effective, this study finds. Researchers estimated that between 38.7% and 50.9% of pathogens causing SSIs in the US are resistant to standard…

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The Food and Drug Administration in May 2011 approved the first new drug in 25 years to treat diarrhea caused by Clostridium difficile, a pathogen that one study suggests may have surpassed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus as the leading hospital-acquired infection, according to the New York Times. In clinical trials, fidaxomicin…

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Hardwiring the process for giving and discontinuing prophylactic antibiotics for surgery helped a university hospital drive up compliance with national guidelines, the July 2008 Journal of the American College of Surgeons reports. Finding education wasn't enough, the authors developed a process with "hard stops" at key points before and after…

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