Voluntary to mandatory: evolution of strategies and attitudes toward influenza vaccination of healthcare personnel.

Background: Assessing the relative success of serial strategies for increasing healthcare personnel (HCP) influenza vaccination rates is important to guide hospital policies to increase vaccine uptake.

Objective: To evaluate serial campaigns that include a mandatory HCP vaccination policy and to describe HCP attitudes toward vaccination and reasons for declination.

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

The effect of an interventional program on adherence to the american academy of pediatrics guidelines for palivizumab prophylaxis.

Objective: To determine the effect of an interventional program designed to improve adherence to American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) guidelines for palivizumab prophylaxis.

Methods: The study was carried out at the Children's Hospital, University of California, Irvine Medical Center and its affiliated clinics. An interventional program focusing on education of health care workers on AAP guidelines, updating health care providers about respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) activity, as well as designating a single clinic with effective screening of referrals for administration of palivizumab, was implemented during the summer of 2004.

Ceftazidime and amikacin as empiric treatment of febrile episodes in neutropenic patients in Saudi Arabia.

Sixty-four consecutive febrile episodes in 50 consecutive patients with malignancy and neutropenia were empirically treated with a combination of ceftazidime and amikacin. Of 52 analysable episodes, the response rate was 59.6% overall and 26.

Increased aminoglycoside dosage requirements in hematologic malignancy.

Aminoglycoside pharmacokinetic parameters were studied prospectively in 27 patients with an underlying hematologic malignancy and fever associated with neutropenia and in 18 control patients. Pharmacokinetic parameters and dosages were determined by linear regression analysis of a one-compartment model by the method of Sawchuk et al. (R.

Infectious complications during therapy of acute leukaemia in Saudi Arabia.

In 40 febrile neutropenic episodes during the induction and consolidation chemotherapy of acute leukaemia in Riyadh, 51% of organisms causing septicaemia were gram-negative, 26% gram-positive, 8% anaerobes and 15% fungi. In 21 (52%) febrile episodes there were pulmonary infiltrates; of the 12 where aetiology was known, six were due to fungi. Pulmonary infiltrates progressed to adult respiratory distress syndrome and death in nine instances.