[Predictors of the progress of latent tuberculosis to clinically active one].

The question recently arises as to the diagnosis of tuberculous infection at early stages of its development. Tuberculin diagnosis ranks below due to the rise ofcomorbidity, including allergic diseases. There is increasing evidence for the leading role in the development of this or that type of tuberculous infection.

[Use of discriminant analysis for the integrated estimation of the activity of an epidemic process of tuberculosis and the efficiency of medical measures for its prevention].

Whether the discriminant analysis might be used for the integrated estimation of an epidemic process of tuberculosis and for the efficiency of medical measures at the interregional levels was studied. Out of the 8 earlier chosen epidemiological criteria, this analysis could identify 6 most important ones that yielded two canonically discriminant variables. Calculations indicated that over 90% of the whole dispersion of regions in the activity of an epidemic process of tuberculosis might be accounted for by Discriminant Variable One.

[The characteristics of the epidemic process of hospital infections in maternity hospitals influenced by an operational management system].

As shown in this investigation, the introduction of the algorithmic system of the control of the epidemiological process of hospital infections (HI) in maternity hospitals makes it possible to reduce HI-induced morbidity and mortality rates more than by half, as well as to alter their nosological and age structures, without additional economic expenditures and under the existing material conditions of maternity hospitals. Such success is achieved by the observation of infection precursors indicating the activation of the mechanisms of the transmission of Staphylococcus, Escherichia and Klebsiella infections and the risk factors (preconditions) facilitating this activation with the immediate involvement of all relevant specialists into action at the stage when an increase in the contamination of newborns and puerperal women is noted and not as late as at the stage of morbidity and mortality.

[A system for the operative management of hospital infections in maternity hospitals].

A system for controlling the epidemic process of hospital infections in maternity hospitals and departments of infant pathology has been created. The specific feature of the proposed method is the prospective character of epidemiological surveillance: from the cause to the effect, and not vice versa. This is achieved by using the results of follow-up of the preconditions of the epidemic process activation (preterm delivery, gestosis, dry labor, birth injuries in mothers and infants) and the precursors of the beginning aggravation of the epidemic situation (the level of the contamination of infants with hospital microflora).

[The role of antibiotics in the prevention of cross infections in newborn infants and mothers during the puerperium].

Epidemiological efficiency of antibiotic prophylaxis of hospital infections (HIs) in maternity homes was analyzed by the materials on the clinical observation of 43995 newborns and their mothers within a period of 1986 to 1989 as well as by the data on the bacteriological examination of 6616 smears from the mucosa of the nose, pharynx, rectum and umbilical wounds of 1890 newborns carried out within the same period. It was shown that the prophylactic use of the antibiotics in the maternity homes led to changes in the microflora colonizing the newborns. The more massive was the use of the antibiotics in the departments of newborns and the postnatal departments, the more intensive was replacement of gram-positive microflora in the newborns by gram-negative organisms among which Klebsiella strains with high antibiotic resistance predominated.