Direct growth on blood and screening agar for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at a tropical surveillance site was compared with broth enrichment and subsequent growth on selective MRSA agar after international sample transport. In Madagascar, 1548 swabs from an MRSA surveillance study were assessed for growth on Columbia blood agar enriched with 5% sheep blood and MRSA screen...

background: complete and fast diagnosis, registry and treatment programs are the main effective strategies for controlling infectious diseases. in addition, an organized and extended infectious disease surveillance system is crucial in designing and monitoring communicable diseases control programs. the quality of the surveillance system can be evaluated by several indices such as timeliness, c...

Eradication of polio as a largest public health innovation is led by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the world (1). The main strategies to reach this goal included improved routine immunization, adequate response to outbreaks and effective surveillance (2). Acute Flaccid Paralysis (AFP) surveillance has considered as a comprehensive program for polio eradication, by identification of are...

BACKGROUND In surveillance networks based on voluntary participation of health-care professionals, there is little choice regarding the selection of participants' characteristics. External information about participants, for example local physician density, can help reduce bias in incidence estimates reported by the surveillance network. METHODS There is an inverse association between the num...

In the last three decades, disease surveillance has grown into a complete discipline, quite distinct from epidemiology. This expansion into a separate scientific area within public health has not been accompanied by parallel growth in the literature about its principles and methods. The development of the fundamental concepts of surveillance systems provides a basis on which to build a better u...

Surveillance studies of enhancing renal masses report on a mean tumor growth rate of about 0.3 cm/year. In most of these studies however, only small tumors in elderly patients were followed. In the current report, we attempt to evaluate the growth rate of "clinically significant" renal carcinomas defined as tumors that were treated immediately upon diagnosis. 46 patients (mean age 64 years SD 1...

Although endoscopic surveillance of patients with Barrett's oesophagus has been widely implemented, its effectiveness is debateable. The recently reported low annual oesophageal adenocarcinoma risk in population studies, the failure to identify most Barrett's patients at risk of disease progression, the poor adherence to surveillance and biopsy protocols, and the significant risk of misclassifi...

OBJECTIVE Most studies show protective effects of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) against polyps and colorectal cancers (CRCs) of up to 50%. Current models are unable to directly estimate changes in effects of chemoprevention on CRCs. The purpose is to develop a model to examine effects of changes in growth rates of polyps on surveillance intervals and risk of CRC. METHODS The ...

background: now the increasing growth of chronic diseases is the major health challenge worldwide. this survey was conducted to assess noncommunicable diseases related risk factors. methods: a population-based cross sectional study was conducted in 2005 and repeated annually by 2009 in hamadan province, the west of iran using two-stage cluster sampling method. a total sample of 6500 subjects 15...