Cost-effectiveness of drug-eluting stents versus bare-metal stents in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention.

Objective: To determine the cost-effectiveness of drug-eluting stents (DES) compared with bare-metal stents (BMS) in patients requiring a percutaneous coronary intervention in France, using a recent meta-analysis including second-generation DES.

Methods: A cost-effectiveness analysis was performed in the French National Health Insurance setting. Effectiveness settings were taken from a meta-analysis of 117 762 patient-years with 76 randomised trials.

Treatment with piperacillin-tazobactam and false-positive Aspergillus galactomannan antigen test results for patients with hematological malignancies.

We report the occurrence of a high rate of false-positive test results during the surveillance of hematology patients for galactomannan (GM) antigenemia. Among 218 patients surveyed from June 2002 through June 2003, 42 (19.3%) had > or =1 serum sample positive for GM (optical density index, >1.