It has been about a year since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that all members of the baby boomer generation get tested for hepatitis C to determine, as we wrote, if they harbor the virus, or if they’ve already been compromised by its presence. The hep C virus can cause liver….
Continue ReadingInfections
Lack of Authority, Resources Invites Contamination at Compounding Pharmacies
“Houston (and anywhere else there’s a compounding pharmacy) we have a problem.” So says FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg, who wrote a blog on FDA Voice expressing concern about the lack of regulatory authority over the facilities that make customized, prescription medicines like the contaminated steroids that killed 53 and sickened 733 people last year…..
Continue ReadingRabies from Infected Kidney Kills Transplant Recipient
The story begins in 2011, when a young Florida man died of brain inflammation from an unknown cause, and organs from his body were transplanted into four recipients. Fifteen months later, a Maryland man died of rabies, and now it turns out to have come from the transplanted kidney he got from the Florida donor…..
Continue ReadingAntibiotic Zithromax Can Kill by Messing with Heart Rhythm
This week the FDA renewed a warning it had first sounded last year about the antibiotic azithromycin. But it wasn’t just a reminder that the drug, whose brand name is Zithromax, or Zmax, carries risks-this was a graver assessment that azithromycin can cause the heart’s electrical rhythms to change which, for some people, can be….
Continue ReadingOfficials Warn About Deadly Drug-Resistant Bacteria
Hospitals are hotbeds for infections because that’s where sick people go. And because those people are already weak, they’re more vulnerable to opportunistic organisms that proliferate in that environment. As we have reported, awareness is increasing of how hospital infections spread and how to minimize that traffic, even if the cause-effect-response process is difficult to….
Continue ReadingSome Hospitals Reuse Insulin Injector Pens
You might remember a blog we wrote last year about safe injection practices, and how hepatitis, HIV and infections can be spread when hygiene is not a priority. Nothing is stupider than reusing invasive medical equipment, but a couple of hospitals in New York don’t seem to have a very high safe-injection IQ. As reported….
Continue ReadingRequired: A Flu Shot for Every Hospital Worker
If the staff of any particular work site should be required to get a flu shot, it’s the people working in a hospital. Guarding against the flu in the hospital isn’t just a matter of personal protection; it’s a matter of patient protection and safety. So why do so many doctors, nurses, technicians, service workers….
Continue ReadingBoy’s Death from Sepsis Spurs Guidelines to Prevent Malpractice in Treatment
Earlier in 2012, we wrote about the sad, unnecessary death of Rory Staunton, a 12-year-old New Yorker who died of septic shock because he was misdiagnosed with a stomach bug. A good thing has come of that tragic event. As the New York Times reported, New York will be the first state to require hospitals….
Continue ReadingUpdates on the Mounting Toll from Contaminated Drugs “Compounded” by Mass. Pharmacy
The death and disability toll from the contaminated spinal pain relief drugs “compounded” by a New England pharmacy continues to mount. Patients have come down with serious infections in Maryland, Virginia and eight other states, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Check this CDC web page for updates and good advice on what patients….
Continue ReadingDrugs “Compounded” by Pharmacies: A Contamination Disaster Waiting to Happen
The ongoing outbreak of spinal infections — with so far five patients dead and 30 with serious meningitis infections in six states, including Maryland and Virginia — shows the antiquated regulatory system for drugs that are compounded by a pharmacy. All the injected steroid drugs that have sickened and killed patients came from a pharmacy….
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