An estimated third of rheumatologists send aspirated synovial fluid samples for culture routinely during the course of management of their patients irrespective of the underlying diagnosis. This is done apparently even when sepsis is not suspected. This audit of 507 synovial fluid culture requests revealed that positive bacterial growth was rare even when sepsis was queried on the request forms...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES The difficulties in diagnosis of neonatal sepsis are due to varied clinical presentation, low sensitivity of blood culture which is considered the gold standard and empirical antibiotic usage affecting the outcome of results. Though polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based detection of bacterial 16S rRNA gene has been reported earlier, this does not provide identification o...

Sepsis is the most common cause of neonatal mortality and is responsible for 30-50% of total neonatal deaths each year in developing countries. The objective of the study was to determine the diagnostic accuracy of Creactive protein (CRP) in neonatal sepsis. Fifty nine consecutive patients with risk factors and clinical features suggestive of CRP sepsis were selected as per operational definiti...

OBJECTIVE To describe the use of bacterial DNA amplification of conserved bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA nucleotide sequences by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to detect the presence of septicemia in critically ill septic patients. DESIGN Case series of blood samples from septic patients comparing the PCR results with conventional blood culture results. SETTING A general intensive care unit i...

Objective: Sepsis accounts for a high rate of mortality with significant impact on health care across the world. Our objective was to determine clinical determinants of outcome of sepsis in a tertiary care setting. Design: Prospective, observational study. Place and Duration: A tertiary care University hospital catering to roughly 50,000 admissions per year with an intensive care unit [ICU] adm...

BACKGROUND Neonatal sepsis is one of the major causes of neonatal morbidity and mortality, particularly in developing countries. The objective of this study was to determine the causative bacteria and level of their resistance to commonly used antibiotics. METHODS This descriptive study was carried out at Ayub Teaching Hospital, Abbottabad from April 2009 to January 2010. All neonates of eith...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate serial serum C-reactive protein (CRP) levels for diagnosis of neonatal infection. SETTING A regional intensive care nursery and two community intensive care nurseries. METHODS All neonates treated for suspected bacterial infection were prospectively evaluated using a standardized clinical pathway. Infants were categorized as having proven sepsis (bacteria isolated from...

background: the appropriateness of using serum levels of procalcotonin (pct) for early diagnosis of newborn sepsis is still controversial. therefore, the objective of the present study was to compare the usefulness of pct with those of serum levels of c-reactive protein (crp) and white blood cell (wbc) counts in the diagnosis and response to treatment of neonatal sepsis.   methods: a total of 4...

Although sepsis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality among newborns in resource-poor countries, little data are available from rural areas on culture-proven sepsis. The aim of the present study was to provide information in this regard. The study reports results on the incidence and aetiology of neonatal sepsis cases admitted to a facility in a rural area in eastern India. Blood culture ...

background: serum procalcitonin (pct) levels differ in patients with bacterial or fungal infections and are significantly elevated in patients with gram-negative bacteremia. we evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of different inflammatory markers to discriminate sepsis caused by different pathogens. materials and methods: we included 328 episodes of bacteremia from 292 patients with sepsis and 31...