Reduction in bacterial contamination of hospital textiles by a novel silver-based laundry treatment.

Treating hospital patient textiles with ionic silver after each washing results in a significant decrease in microbial contamination. Although further study is needed to better understand the role textiles play in hospital-acquired infections and to quantify the influence of silver textile treatment on health care-associated infection risk and patient outcomes, ionic silver treatment of textiles may prove useful in hospital-acquired infection reduction strategies.

Drosophila muller f elements maintain a distinct set of genomic properties over 40 million years of evolution.

The Muller F element (4.2 Mb, ~80 protein-coding genes) is an unusual autosome of Drosophila melanogaster; it is mostly heterochromatic with a low recombination rate. To investigate how these properties impact the evolution of repeats and genes, we manually improved the sequence and annotated the genes on the D.

Use and overuse of left ventriculography.

Background: Left ventriculography provided the first imaging of left ventricular function and was historically performed as part of coronary angiography despite a small but significant risk of complications. Because modern noninvasive imaging techniques are more accurate and carry smaller risks, the routine use of left ventriculography is of questionable utility. We sought to analyze the frequency that left ventriculography was performed during coronary angiography in patients with and without a recent alternative assessment of left ventricular function.

Tradeoffs of using administrative claims and medical records to identify the use of personalized medicine for patients with breast cancer.

Background: Administrative claims and medical records are important data sources to examine healthcare utilization and outcomes. Little is known about identifying personalized medicine technologies in these sources.

Objectives: To describe agreement, sensitivity, and specificity of administrative claims compared with medical records for 2 pairs of targeted tests and treatments for breast cancer.