Relationship of colonization with vancomycin-resistant enterococci and risk of systemic infection in patients with cancer.
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Anti-Bacterial Agents↗
Biomedical subjects
Madonna J Matar
Publications and source records attributed to Madonna J Matar.
Colonization and infection with vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus among patients with cancer.
Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) cause substantial morbidity and mortality in immune-suppressed patients. In a retrospective review, VRE fecal colonization was documented in 4.7% (99 of 2115) of patients screened, with 5.4% of patients with leukemia, 4.9% of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation recipients, and 2.2% of patients with lymphoma being colonized. Among the 99 patients with VRE colonization, 29 (29.29%) developed bacteremia, and there were 32 episodes of VRE infection at other sites. The rate of VRE bacteremia in solid tumor patients (0.12%) was significantly lower (P <or= .0001). VRE colonization had a negative predictive value of 99.9% and a positive predictive value of 29.3% for the development of VRE bacteremia and might help identify a high-risk subset of patients that might benefit from preemptive VRE therapy during episodes of neutropenic fever.
Anti-Bacterial Agents↗
Correlation between E-test, disk diffusion, and microdilution methods for antifungal susceptibility testing of fluconazole and voriconazole.
The activities of fluconazole and voriconazole against isolates of Candida spp. (n = 400) were tested by the E-test, disk diffusion, and the National Committee for Clinical Laboratory Standards (NCCLS) M27-A2 broth microdilution-based reference methods. More than 96% of isolates found to be susceptible to fluconazole by the reference method were identified as susceptible by the agar-based methods. Lesser degrees of correlation with the reference method were seen for isolates identified as resistant by the agar-based methods. Interpretive categories are not available for voriconazole, but results qualitatively similar to those for fluconazole were seen. The agar-based E-test and disk diffusion methods are reliable alternatives to the NCCLS M27-A2 reference microdilution method for isolates that test susceptible to fluconazole.
Antifungal Agents↗