Historical Background In 1862 Louis Pasteur's ingenious experiments into the nature of putrefaction were officially endorsed by the Paris Academy of Science. The endorsement signaled an end to the long-held belief that the exposure of organic material to air brought…
According to the 2017 World Drug Report, an estimated 250 million people worldwide used illicit drugs at least once in 2015. Of these, 11.8 million injected drugs. Since the early 2000s, prescription opioid injection increased dramatically in the United States,…
After discovery of the spleen, which occurred sometime during the dawn of human dissection, its true role in health and disease remained a mystery for many generations. At the time of Galen, the spleen was thought to be important in…
Predisposition of Older Adults to Infection Risk factors for infection in older adults are numerous and often coexist in complex relationships. Seemingly similar patients by conventional criteria may have very different risk due to measures not often used in young…
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…