Infection Control

Use lab results to gather epidemiological data and reduce hospital-acquired infections in order to improve the overall quality of patient care

Hospitals are under pressure to tackle the rising issue of hospital-acquired infections (HAI's), both to improve the quality of patient care and to control costs. According to the CDC, HAI's account for an estimated 2 million infections and $4.5 billion in excess healthcare costs annually in the United States. Due in large part to the excess use of antibiotics, more than 70% of the bacteria that cause HAI's are now resistant to at least one of the drugs most commonly used to treat them.¹ As a result, the infections are more difficult to treat and can lead to:

One of the challenges to tackling the problem of HAI's has been that diagnosing the infections can be difficult as conventional laboratory methods can take days and results often arrive too late to influence treatment decisions. The delay in accurate results forces physicians to treat empirically whether the patient has a true infection or not, often leading to unnecessary, inappropriate or even inadequate antibiotic coverage.

Opportunity for Infection Control

AdvanDx's molecular-based diagnostic products provide rapid identification of micro-organisms causing infections. Results from the laboratory are available within hours instead of days and help hospitals improve therapy for their patients. By supporting the implementation of rapid diagnostics and playing an integral part of an effective antibiotic and patient management team, infection control practitioners can help ensure appropriate antibiotic use and improve infection management at their hospital.

PNA FISH™ provides rapid identification of bacteria and yeast in positive blood cultures. The accurate results are available in hours instead of days and support appropriate therapy for patients with bloodstream infections. Studies show that implementing PNA FISH can result in:

EVIGENE™ provides rapid detection of antibiotic resistance and virulence markers in bacteria causing hospital and community acquired infections. The rapid results allow laboratories, physicians, pharmacists and infection control to better coordinate efforts to combat the spread of resistant and virulent bacteria and in turn improve both patient care and overall hospital operations.

Please see individual products for country specific regulatory status

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Campaign to Prevent Antimicrobial Resistance in Healthcare Settings. http://www.cdc.gov/drugresistance/healthcare/default.htm
2. Toombs et al. Impact of Peptide Nucleic Acid (PNA) Fluorescence in situ Hybridization (FISH) for Enterococcal blood stream infections. Oral Abstract #131, IDSA 2006 Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada
3. Forrest et al. J Antimicrob Chemother. 2006 Jul;58(1):154-8
4. Forrest et al. J. Clin. Microbiol. 2006 44: 3381-3383.