Assessment of Antimicrobial Consumption in Multi-Field Hospitals with Pediatric Inpatients: Conventional vs. Novel Pediatric-Adjusted Methodologies.

Background: the objective of this study was to propose a methodology for the assessment of antimicrobial consumption (AMC) in pediatric inpatients and to estimate variances in consumption levels in multi-field hospitals with pediatric inpatients, calculated by means of the pediatric-adjusted methodology vs. the conventional methodology.

Methods: the pediatric-adjusted methodology based on the conventional ATC/DDD method and children's DDDs (cDDD) for antimicrobials were proposed and validated in a series of probabilistic sensitivity analyses of real clinical data extracted from the receipt notes of three multi-field hospitals.

Biomarker Value in the Diagnosis of Community-Acquired Pneumonia with Concomitant Chronic Heart Failure.

The diagnosis of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) with chronic heart failure (CHF) is associated with objective difficulties. Our case-control study aims to establish whether established serum inflammatory biomarkers are relevant to the diagnosis of CAP in patients with CHF. Seventy inpatients with previously diagnosed CHF and suspected non-severe CAP were recruited and then stratified into two subgroups with confirmed and rejected diagnosis of CAP.