Endoscopic submucosal dissection: the first reported experience from a New Zealand centre.

Aim: Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) is internationally accepted as a minimally invasive procedure to treat early gastrointestinal cancers endoscopically. Uptake of this procedure in the West is limited. No published data are available in New Zealand.

Quantifying patient bacterial exposure risk from reusable phlebotomy tourniquets in a New Zealand secondary level hospital.

Aim: This study aimed to assess for the presence of multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) on tourniquets and quantify the number of bacteria to which patients might be exposed with each blood collection episode.

Methods: Tourniquets were randomly sampled in a 246-bed, secondary level, New Zealand hospital, which is currently non-endemic for MDROs. A 6-cm length of each tourniquet sampled was applied to the surface of an agar plate and the colony forming units (CFUs) were enumerated.