Monday, December 24, 2007
Infections After Plastic Procedures: Incidences, Etiologies, Risk Factors, and Antibiotic Prophylaxis.
Aesthetic Plast Surg. 2007 Dec
Gravante G, Caruso R, Araco A, Cervelli V.
Department of General Surgery, University of Tor Vergata in Rome, Via U. Maddalena 40/a, Ciampino (Roma), 00043, Italy, ggravante@hotmail.com.
BACKGROUND: Through a review of the English literature, this study aimed to assess the incidence, etiology, risk factors, and preventive measures for postoperative infections occurring after plastic surgery operations.
METHODS: All studies describing the occurrence of infections after plastic surgery procedures including case reports, prospective trials, and retrospective series were selected.
RESULTS: The 85 articles analyzed showed that incidences differ greatly among procedures and seem to be influenced by different and specific risk factors for each operation. Etiologic agents are primarily bacteria, although mycobacteria, virus, and fungi also have been described. No agreement exists on the use of antibiotic prophylaxis, except for abdominoplasties, because few specific prospective trials are present in the literature.
CONCLUSIONS: Infections remain an important problem in plastic surgery with different points that still need to be clarified. Hopefully, in the future prospective randomized trials will definitively address this issue in order to provide plastic surgeons with clear and unbiased guidelines on its prevention and management.
Springer Link
Labels: Abdominoplasty; Complications; Infections; Liposuction; Mammaplasty; Plastic surgery
Friday, December 21, 2007
Respiratory infections: do we ever recover?
2007
Goulding J, Snelgrove R, Saldana J, Didierlaurent A, Cavanagh M, Gwyer E, Wales J, Wissinger EL, Hussell T.
B.Sc. (Hons), Kennedy Institute for Rheumatology, Imperial College London, 1 Aspenlea Road, London W6 8LH, UK. t.hussell@imperial.ac.uk.
Although the outcome of respiratory infection alters with age, nutritional status, and immunologic competence, there is a growing body of evidence that we all develop a unique but subtle inflammatory profile. This uniqueness is determined by the sequence of infections or antigenic insults encountered that permanently mold our lungs through experience. This experience and learning process forms the basis of immunologic memory that is attributed to the acquired immune system. But what happens if the pathogen is not homologous to any preceding it? In the absence of cross-specific acquired immunity, one would expect a response similar to that of a subject who had never been infected with anything before. It is now clear that this is not the case. Prior inflammation in the respiratory tract alters immunity and pathology to subsequent infections even when they are antigenically distinct. Furthermore, the influence of the first infection is long lasting, not dependent on the presence of T and B cells, and effective against disparate pathogen combinations. We have used the term "innate imprinting" to explain this phenomenon, although innate education may be a closer description. This educational process, by sequential waves of infection, may be beneficial, as shown for successive viral infections, or significantly worse, as illustrated by the increased susceptibly to life-threatening bacterial pneumonia in patients infected with seasonal and pandemic influenza. We now examine what these long-term changes involve, the likely cell populations affected, and what this means to those studying inflammatory disorders in the lung.
Full Text Article
American Thoracic Society
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Asthma and atypical bacterial infection
Chest. 2007 Dec
Sutherland ER, Martin RJ.
National Jewish Medical and Research Center, Department of Medicine, 1400 Jackson St, J220, Denver, CO 80206. sutherlande@njc.org.
A growing body of basic and clinical science implicates the atypical bacterial pathogens Mycoplasma pneumoniae and Chlamydophila (formerly Chlamydia) pneumoniae as potentially important factors in asthma, although their exact contribution to asthma development and/or persistence remains to be determined. Evidence from human studies links both M pneumoniae and C pneumoniae to new-onset wheezing, exacerbations of prevalent asthma, and long-term decrements in lung function, suggesting that these organisms can play an important role in the natural history of asthma. Furthermore, animal models of acute and chronic infection with these organisms indicate that they have the ability to modulate allergic sensitization and pulmonary physiologic and immune response to allergen challenge. These findings raise the possibility that, in at least some individuals with asthma, antibiotic therapy might have a role in long-term treatment. While antibiotics do not currently have a defined role in the treatment of stable patients with chronic asthma, there is emerging evidence that asthma symptoms and biomarkers of airway inflammation can improve when patients who have atypical bacterial infection as a cofactor in their asthma are treated with macrolide antibiotics. Ongoing research into the importance of atypical pathogens in asthma will further elucidate whether these infections are important in disease development or whether their prevalence is increased in asthmatic subjects due to chronic airway inflammation or other, yet unidentified, predisposing factors. Current studies will further define the role of macrolide antibiotics in the treatment of stable patients with asthma, ultimately determining whether these therapeutic agents have a place in asthma management.
PMID: 18079229 [PubMed - in process]
Labels: airway inflammation, asthma, atypical bacterial infection, Chlamydia, Chlamydophila pneumoniae, macrolide antibiotics, Mycoplasma pneumoniae
