Impact of national guidelines on use of BRCA1/2 germline testing, risk management advice given to women with pathogenic BRCA1/2 variants and uptake of advice.

Background: This nationwide study assessed the impact of nationally agreed cancer genetics guidelines on use of BRCA1/2 germline testing, risk management advice given by health professionals to women with pathogenic BRCA1/2 variants and uptake of such advice by patients.

Methods: Clinic files of 883 women who had initial proband screens for BRCA1/2 pathogenic variants at 12 familial cancer clinics between July 2008-July 2009 (i.e.

Evaluation of implementation of risk management guidelines for carriers of pathogenic variants in mismatch repair genes: a nationwide audit of familial cancer clinics.

Introduction: This nationwide study assessed the impact of Lynch syndrome-related risk management guidelines on clinicians' recommendations of risk management strategies to carriers of pathogenic variants in mismatch repair genes and the extent to which carriers took up strategies in concordance with guidelines.

Materials And Methods: Clinic files of 464 carriers (with and without colorectal cancer) were audited for carriers who received their genetic testing results in July 2008-July 2009 (i.e.

Time to Detection in Culture Supports Prediction of Low Transmissibility of Tuberculosis and Discontinuation of Isolation for Low-Risk Patients With A Single AFB-Negative and NAAT-Negative Respiratory Specimen.

For 94 patients with culture-positive pulmonary tuberculosis, time-to-detection (TTD), acid-fast bacilli (AFB) smear, and nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT) results were reviewed. All 12 patients whose first specimen was negative by AFB smear and NAAT had prolonged TTD, indicating low transmissibility and supporting discontinuing isolation for low-risk patients.Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2018;39:619-621.

Reductions in Clostridium difficile Infection (CDI) Rates Using Real-Time Automated Clinical Criteria Verification to Enforce Appropriate Testing.

PCR testing identifies both colonized and infected patients, making it critical to only test patients that meet clinical criteria for infection (CDI). We implemented an automated order-entry protocol that reduced inappropriate testing by 64% and hospital-onset (HO) CDI Standardized Infection Ratio (SIR) from 1.62 to 0.

Direct-from-Blood-Culture Disk Diffusion To Determine Antimicrobial Susceptibility of Gram-Negative Bacteria: Preliminary Report from the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute Methods Development and Standardization Working Group.

The performance of a disk diffusion test using broth from positive blood cultures as inoculum (direct disk diffusion [dDD]) was evaluated for a collection of 20 challenge isolates of , , and Isolates seeded into human blood were inoculated into Bactec Plus Aerobic/F, VersaTREK Redox 1, and BacT/Alert FA Plus bottles and incubated in the respective automated blood culture systems. Disk diffusion results were compared to reference disk diffusion results. Categorical agreement (CA) values for dDD, after removal of random errors due to natural MIC variation, were 87.