Point prevalence surveys of antimicrobial use in adult inpatients at Canterbury District Health Board Hospitals.

Aims: To determine the nature and appropriateness of antimicrobial prescribing in adult inpatients at Canterbury District Health Board (CDHB).

Methods: Multidisciplinary teams collected clinical details for all adult inpatients on antimicrobial therapy at three CDHB facilities (~1,100 beds) and made standardised assessments based on the Australian National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (http://naps.org.

Outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) in Christchurch: 18 years on.

Aim: Outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) has become an established option for management infections requiring intravenous therapy. As the uptake of OPAT has increased, the clinical governance has changed and is now managed via virtual clinics and increased use of district nurses in addition to specialist outpatient review. The aim of this study was to report the characteristics, diagnoses, treatment and outcomes of patients managed by the service over 12 months in 2015/6 and compared these features with those of patients treated with OPAT in 1999.

Plasma myoglobin in the early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction.

Serum and plasma myoglobin and creatine kinase-MB catalytic activity were analysed in 157 patients admitted within 2 hours of the onset of chest pain (58 were retrospectively recognized as acute myocardial infarction). Serum and plasma values were highly correlated for both myoglobin and creatine kinase-MB. Plasma myoglobin appeared to be more sensitive than creatine kinase-MB for the early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction; using a cut-off value of 100 micrograms/l, 90% of acute myocardial infarction cases were correctly recognized by plasma myoglobin 6 hours after the onset of chest pain, with a diagnostic specificity of 100% for non-acute myocardial infarction chest pain subjects.

[Idiopathic retroperitoneal fibrosis: effectiveness of surgery combined with corticosteroid therapy].

Idiopathic retroperitoneal fibrosis (ERF) is a rare disease characterized by non-neoplastic fibroblastic and inflammatory proliferation. We describe a case of a 58-year-old man presenting with abdominal pain, weight loss and abdominal mass on clinical examination. The patient was evaluated by abdominal CT scan and magnetic resonance imaging which disclosed a periaortic soft-tissue mass with marked longitudinal extension below renal arteries origin.

[Systemic mastocytosis with portal hypertension and hepatocellular failure].

Systemic mastocytosis is a rare disease of mast cell proliferation with cutaneous and multi-visceral involvement. Portal hypertension and ascites are rare manifestations of systemic mastocytosis. We report a case of systemic mastocytosis presenting with extensive nodular cutaneous lesions and hepatic dysfunction, manifested by portal hypertension (ascites, splenomegaly) and derangement of metabolic function (hyperammonemia, hypoalbuminemia, hypocholesterolemia), a picture resembling that of a common cirrhotic form.