Scabies epidemic: price and prejudice.

Scabies epidemics are not unusual, and the recommended way of stopping them is by simultaneous treatment of everybody in the facility; this has been known since the last century, when Norwegian scabies was a problem in Norway. When this is not done, scabies epidemics can smolder for months. Scabies should not spread with good infection control measures, but we learned that a good infection control service is not enough.

[Risk factors for infection after heart surgery].

A consecutive series of 84 patients operated by the same surgical team was studied in order to identify risk factors for post operative infection. Female sex and longer antibiotic prophylaxis were significantly associated with higher infection risk; the risk of dying of infection was more pronounced with infected men than with infected women. Diabetes, undernutrition, low albumin serum level in the first or in the fifth day post-operatively, asthma or pneumonia in the past did not correlate with infectious risk, as well as use of antibiotic before surgery or longer hospitalization before surgery.

[Immunoprophylaxis of hepatitis B: vaccination at a general hospital in São Paulo using methods adapted to our socioeconomic reality].

The vaccination program against hepatitis B at the hospital of the "Real Sociedade Portuguesa de Beneficiência" in São Paulo was carried out successfully. Out of 554 persons that received the initial 3 vaccine doses 520 completed the program (93.86%) which is an achievement comparable to the best ones of the published series.

[Hospital infection: seven years of systematic research at a general hospital in São Paulo].

A seven year analysis with established adequate methods of reporting and confirming hospital acquired infections shows a surprising statistically significant relationship between the frequency of hospital acquired infections and the number of infected patients admitted to this hospital: hospital acquired infections comprised 2% to 3.7% of all admissions, and patients already infected admitted were 5.3% to 8.