Establishing a Benchmark for Iatrogenic Hemodilution and Blood Transfusion in Long-Segment Spine Fusion Surgery.

Study Design: Single-center retrospective cohort study.

Objective: To identify risk factors for transfusion during long-segment thoracolumbar fusion surgery and benchmark cutoffs that could be used by the operative team to guide the use of transfusion.

Summary Of Background Data: Perioperative transfusion for patients undergoing long-segment thoracolumbar fusion surgery is common.

Administrative records-based criterion measures.

This paper covers considerations in using criterion measures based on administrative data. We begin with a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating administrative criterion measures as "objective" rather than (ratings-based) assessments of job performance. We then describe the associated advantages (e.

Characterization of Host-Pathogen-Device Interactions in Pseudomonas aeruginosa Infection of Breast Implants.

Background: Pseudomonas aeruginosa accounts for 7 to 22 percent of breast implant-associated infections, which can result in reconstructive failures and explantation. Investigating host-pathogen-device interactions in mice and patient samples will improve the understanding of colonization mechanisms, for targeted treatments and clinical guidelines.

Methods: Mice with and without implants were infected with PAO1 laboratory strain or BIP2 or BIP16 clinical strains and killed at 1 day or 7 days after infection to evaluate for colonization of implants and underlying tissues by means of colony-forming unit enumeration.

Mucosal infection rewires TNFɑ signaling dynamics to skew susceptibility to recurrence.

A mucosal infectious disease episode can render the host either more or less susceptible to recurrent infection, but the specific mechanisms that tip the balance remain unclear. We investigated this question in a mouse model of recurrent urinary tract infection and found that a prior bladder infection resulted in an earlier onset of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNFɑ)-mediated bladder inflammation upon subsequent bacterial challenge, relative to age-matched naive mice. However, the duration of TNFɑ signaling activation differed according to whether the first infection was chronic (Sensitized) or self-limiting (Resolved).

Host restriction of Escherichia coli recurrent urinary tract infection occurs in a bacterial strain-specific manner.

Urinary tract infections (UTI) are extremely common and can be highly recurrent, with 1-2% of women suffering from six or more recurrent episodes per year. The high incidence of recurrent UTI, including recurrent infections caused by the same bacterial strain that caused the first infection, suggests that at least some women do not mount a protective adaptive immune response to UTI. Here we observed in a mouse model of cystitis (bladder infection) that infection with two different clinical uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) isolates, UTI89 or CFT073, resulted in different kinetics of bacterial clearance and different susceptibility to same-strain recurrent infection.