To examine the costs and cost-effectiveness of mirtazapine compared to placebo over 12-week follow-up.

Economic evaluation in a double-blind randomized controlled trial of mirtazapine vs. placebo.

Community settings and care homes in 26 UK centers.

People with probable or possible Alzheimer’s disease and agitation.

Primary outcome included incremental cost of participants’ health and social care per 6-point difference in CMAI score at 12 weeks. Secondary cost-utility analyses examined participants’ and unpaid carers’ gain in quality-adjusted life years (derived from EQ-5D-5L, DEMQOL-Proxy-U, and DEMQOL-U) from the health and social care and societal perspectives.

One hundred and two participants were allocated to each group; 81 mirtazapine and 90 placebo participants completed a 12-week assessment (87 and 95, respectively, completed a 6-week assessment). Mirtazapine and placebo groups did not differ on mean CMAI scores or health and social care costs over the study period, before or after adjustment for center and living arrangement (independent living/care home). On the primary outcome, neither mirtazapine nor placebo could be considered a cost-effective strategy with a high level of confidence. Groups did not differ in terms of participant self- or proxy-rated or carer self-rated quality of life scores, health and social care or societal costs, before or after adjustment.

On cost-effectiveness grounds, the use of mirtazapine cannot be recommended for agitated behaviors in people living with dementia. Effective and cost-effective medications for agitation in dementia remain to be identified in cases where non-pharmacological strategies for managing agitation have been unsuccessful.

Healthcare personnel (HCP) were recruited to provide serum samples, which were tested for antibodies against Ebola or Lassa virus to evaluate for asymptomatic seroconversion.

From 2014 to 2016, 4 patients with Ebola virus disease (EVD) and 1 patient with Lassa fever (LF) were treated in the Serious Communicable Diseases Unit (SCDU) at Emory University Hospital. Strict infection control and clinical biosafety practices were implemented to prevent nosocomial transmission of EVD or LF to HCP.

All personnel who entered the SCDU who were required to measure their temperatures and complete a symptom questionnaire twice daily were eligible.

No employee developed symptomatic EVD or LF. EVD and LF antibody studies were performed on sera samples from 42 HCP. The 6 participants who had received investigational vaccination with a chimpanzee adenovirus type 3 vectored Ebola glycoprotein vaccine had high antibody titers to Ebola glycoprotein, but none had a response to Ebola nucleoprotein or VP40, or a response to LF antigens.

Patients infected with filoviruses and arenaviruses can be managed successfully without causing occupation-related symptomatic or asymptomatic infections. Meticulous attention to infection control and clinical biosafety practices by highly motivated, trained staff is critical to the safe care of patients with an infection from a special pathogen.

The US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Evidence-based Practice Center (EPC) program sponsors the development of systematic reviews to inform clinical policy and practice. The EPC program sought to better understand how health systems identify and use this evidence.

Representatives from eleven EPCs, the EPC Scientific Resource Center, and AHRQ developed a semi-structured interview script to query a diverse group of nine Key Informants (KIs) involved in health system quality, safety and process improvement about how they identify and use evidence. Interviews were transcribed and qualitatively summarized into key themes.

All KIs reported that their organizations have either centralized quality, safety, and process improvement functions within their system, or they have partnerships with other organizations to conduct this work. There was variation in how evidence was identified, with larger health systems having medical librarians and central bureaus to gather and disseminate information and smaller systems having local chief medical officers or individual clinicians do this work. KIs generally prefer guidelines, especially those with treatment algorithms, because they are actionable. They like systematic reviews because they efficiently condense study results and reconcile conflicting data. They prefer information from systematic reviews to be presented as short digestible summaries with the full report available on demand. KIs preferred systematic reviews from reputable entities and those without commercial bias. Some of the challenges KIs reported include how to resolve conflicting evidence, the generalizability of evidence to local needs, determining whether the evidence is up-to-date, and the length of time required to generate reviews. The topics of greatest interest included predictive analytics, high-value care, advance care planning, and care coordination. To increase awareness of AHRQ EPC reviews, KIs suggest alerting people at multiple levels in a health-system when new evidence reports are available and making reports easier to find in common search engines.

Systematic reviews are valued by health system leaders. To be most useful they should be easy to locate and available in different formats targeted to the needs of different audiences.

Hip and knee arthroplasty infections are associated with considerable healthcare costs. The merits of reducing the postoperative surveillance period from 1 year to 90 days have been debated.

To report the first pan-Canadian hip and knee periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) rates and to describe the implications of a shorter (90-day) postoperative surveillance period.

Prospective surveillance for infection following hip and knee arthroplasty was conducted by hospitals participating in the Canadian Nosocomial Infection Surveillance Program (CNISP) using standard surveillance definitions.

Overall hip and knee PJI rates were 1.64 and 1.52 per 100 procedures, respectively. Deep incisional and organ-space hip and knee PJI rates were 0.96 and 0.71, respectively. In total, 93% of hip PJIs and 92% of knee PJIs were identified within 90 days, with a median time to detection of 21 days. However, 11%–16% of deep incisional and organ-space infections were not detected within 90 days. This rate was reduced to 3%–4% at 180 days post procedure. Anaerobic and polymicrobial infections had the shortest median time from procedure to detection (17 and 18 days, respectively) compared with infections due to other microorganisms, including Staphylococcus aureus.

PJI rates were similar to those reported elsewhere, although differences in national surveillance systems limit direct comparisons. Our results suggest that a postoperative surveillance period of 90 days will detect the majority of PJIs; however, up to 16% of deep incisional and organ-space infections may be missed. Extending the surveillance period to 180 days could allow for a better estimate of disease burden.

Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2017;38:147–153

To determine the relative risk of invasive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection among non-colonized (NC) patients, intermittently colonized (IC) patients, and persistently colonized (PC) patients.

Observational cohort study of patient data collected longitudinally over a 41-month period.

Department of Veterans Affairs Eastern Colorado Healthcare System, a tertiary care medical center.

Any patient who received ≥5 MRSA nasal swab tests between February 20, 2010, and July 26, 2013. In total, 3,872 patients met these criteria, 0 were excluded, 95% were male, 71% were white, and the mean age was 62.9 years on the date of study entry.

Patients were divided into cohorts based on MRSA colonization status. Physicians reviewed medical records to identify invasive infection and were blinded to colonization status. Cox and Kaplan-Meier analyses were used to assess the relationship between colonization status and invasive infection.

In total, 102 patients developed invasive MRSA infections, 16.3% of these were PC patients, 11.2% of these were IC patients, and 0.5% of these were NC patients. PC patients were at higher risk of invasive infection than NC patients (hazard ratio [HR] 36.8; 95% CI, 18.4–73.6; P<.001). IC patients were also at higher risk than NC patients (HR, 22.8; 95% CI, 13.3–39.3; P<.001). The difference in risk between PC and IC patients was not statistically significant (HR, 1.61; 95% CI, 0.94–2.78, P=.084). Alternate analysis methods confirmed these results.

The risk of invasive MRSA infection is much higher among PC and IC patients, supporting routine clinical testing for colonization. However, this risk is similar among PC and IC patients, suggesting that distinguishing between the 2 colonization states may not be clinically important.

Infect. Control Hosp. Epidemiol. 2015;36(11):1292–1297