Diabetic foot osteomyelitis: bone markers and treatment outcomes.

Aims: Novel bone turnover markers could help with the diagnosis and monitoring of osteomyelitis patients. We compared levels of two bone turnover markers, serum amino-terminal telopeptides (NTx) and bone alkaline phosphatase (BAP), in diabetic patients with and without osteomyelitis.

Methods: Matched case-control study was conducted with diabetic patients with and without osteomyelitis.

A multicenter study of Clostridium difficile infection-related colectomy, 2000-2006.

Objective: To assess Clostridium difficile infection (CDI)-related colectomy rates by CDI surveillance definitions and over time at multiple healthcare facilities.

Setting: Five university-affiliated acute care hospitals in the United States.

Design And Methods: Cases of CDI and patients who underwent colectomy from July 2000 through June 2006 were identified from 5 US tertiary care centers.

Implementing automated surveillance for tracking Clostridium difficile infection at multiple healthcare facilities.

Automated surveillance using electronically available data has been found to be accurate and save time. An automated Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) surveillance algorithm was validated at 4 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Epicenter hospitals. Electronic surveillance was highly sensitive, specific, and showed good to excellent agreement for hospital-onset; community-onset, study facility-associated; indeterminate; and recurrent CDI.

The impact of ICD-9-CM code rank order on the estimated prevalence of Clostridium difficile infections.

Background: US estimates of the Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) burden have utilized International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) diagnosis codes. Whether ICD-9-CM code rank order affects CDI prevalence estimates is important because the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS) and the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) have varying limits on the number of ICD-9-CM codes collected.

Methods: ICD-9-CM codes for CDI (008.