Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating condition that is unique in terms of its multisystem impact and need for multidisciplinary management. Moreover, the prevalence and occurrence of SCI have continued to escalate over the years. In 2017, approximately 285,000…
Revised November 12, 2020 Advances in surgical techniques and immunosuppressive regimens have had a pivotal role in optimizing outcomes after transplantation. The introduction of cyclosporine in the 1980s and tacrolimus a decade later heralded the era of modern immunosuppression, and…
Revised March 29, 2021 The clinical approach to infections in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) involves an understanding of basic transplantation techniques, clinical syndromes, host defense defects at different times after transplantation, the natural history of individual infections,…
Revised November 29, 2020 Revised November 12, 2020 Cancer patients probably represent the best example of how both a disease and its treatment can impair the complex immunologic network aimed at maintaining the integrity of our body and defending it…
Components of Host Defense Appreciation of the predisposing risk factors is an essential but perplexing exercise because it suggests that each individual component plays an independent role. Certain organisms infect patients with specific defects, and these associations should be taken…
Revised June 25, 2020 Revised March 29, 2021 Transfusion-Associated Infections Beeson reported the first cases of transfusion-associated hepatitis in 1943, describing seven patients who developed illness 1 to 4 months after having received a red blood cell (RBC) or plasma…
Historical Background The potential for bloodborne transmission of hepatitis B first was noted in 1885, when Lurman described jaundice in factory workers who had received smallpox vaccine prepared from “human lymph.” More reports appeared in the subsequent decades as use…
Definitions Health care–associated urinary tract infection (UTI) refers to UTI that is acquired while a patient is receiving medical treatment in a health care setting. The majority of health care–associated UTIs occur in patients whose urinary tracts are currently or…
Nosocomial pneumonia refers to pneumonia acquired while in a hospital. It is classically divided into hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP) and ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) but has also been applied to the concept of health care–associated pneumonia (HCAP). The majority of studies on…
The relentless progress of medical science and technology has been accompanied by the development of a host of new diagnostic and therapeutic medical devices, each of which is associated with its own complications. Included in the list of devices and…