Procalcitonin as diagnostic biomarker of sepsis AFSHARI , Arash , HARBARTH , Stéphan Juergen AFSHARI , Arash , HARBARTH , Stéphan Juergen

Clostridium : transmission difficile ? HARBARTH , Stéphan Juergen , SAMORE , Matthew H HARBARTH , Stéphan Juergen , SAMORE , Matthew H . Clostridium : transmission difficile ?

Year in review 2011: Critical Care - infection

Bench-to-bedside review: Rapid molecular diagnostics for bloodstream infection - a new frontier?

Among critically ill patients, the diagnosis of bloodstream infection poses a major challenge. Current standard bacterial identification based on blood culture platforms is intrinsically time-consuming and slow. The continuous evolvement of molecular techniques has the potential of providing a faster, more sensitive and direct identification of causative pathogens without prior need for cultiva...

Blood culture-based detection of bloodstream infections

Bloodstream infections (BSIs) are associated with adverse clinical and health-economic outcomes [1,2]. Th irty to forty percent of all cases of severe sepsis and septic shock are culture-proven BSIs, for which there is a rapid decline in survival rates in cases where inadequate antimicrobial therapy is administered within the fi rst 24 hours [3,4]. As a consequence, clinicians often resort to e...

Year in review 2010: Critical Care - infection

Infections remain among the most important concerns in critically ill patients. Early and reliable diagnosis of infection still poses difficulties in this setting but also represents a crucial step toward appropriate antimicrobial therapy. Increasing antimicrobial resistance challenges established approaches to the optimal management of infections in the intensive care unit. Rapid infection dia...