Infection prevention and control
Nicola Neale, Joanne Sale in Developing Practical Nursing Skills, 2022
Blood and body fluid spillages pose significant cross-infection risks, so they must be dealt with immediately and appropriately – check your local policy. The following processes are recommended in Appendix 9 of the HPS National Infection Prevention and Control Manual (http://www.nipcm.hps.scot.nhs.uk/): Urine/faeces/vomit/sputum. Initially, soak up and remove gross contamination/spillage with paper towels. Do not use allow chlorine-releasing agents to come into direct contact with urine as this may generate chlorine fumes; decontaminate the area with a combined detergent/chlorine-producing solution of 1000 ppm av Cl. Leave the solution for 3 min or as per manufacturer’s recommendations.Blood/other body fluids including cerebrospinal, peritoneal, pleural, pericardial, synovial, amniotic, semen, vaginal secretions, breast milk and other body fluids with visible blood. Apply chlorine-releasing granules to the spill or use disposable towels soaked with a solution of 10,000 ppm av Cl. Leave the solution for 3 min or as per the manufacturer’s recommendations and then dispose of the waste.
Aids and Hepatitis
T.M. Craft, P.M. Upton in Key Topics In Anaesthesia, 2021
Staff. High risk body fluids are blood, amniotic fluid, vaginal secretions, semen, breast milk, CSF, peritoneal, pleural, pericardial and synovial fluid. Saliva in association with dentistry, and unfixed organs and tissues also are classified as high risk and may transmit the virus. It is presently considered unethical to test all patients for evidence of HIV infection prior to surgery. ‘Universal precautions’ which assume that all patients maybe infected are recommended. Identical precautions are taken with other bloodborne infective agents, e.g. hepatitis B, and their success suggests that they are likely to be equally effective against the less infective HIV virus. Other precautions include the use of gloves when there is any risk of contact with infective body fluids, the wearing of masks and protective glasses when infective fluids may become airborne and gowns if there is any chance of being splashed. If contact with body fluids occurs the affected part should be washed immediately. Open or exudative wounds should be covered and contact with potentially infective fluids avoided. To reduce the risk of needle stick injuries, needles are immediately disposed of in a suitable container. They are not resheathed, or passed from one person to another. The risk of seroconversion following a needle stick injury is 0.3%. Post-exposure prophylaxis with zidovudine, lamivudine and indinavir is given as soon as possible (within 1-2 hours) after exposure and continued for 4 weeks.
Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy
Helen Whitwell, Christopher Milroy, Daniel du Plessis in Forensic Neuropathology, 2021
A full autopsy should be conducted. Often there will be no specific findings, but signs of seizure activity may be present, including bite marks on the tongue and a voided bladder. Their absence does not exclude seizure activity and these can only be considered ‘soft’ signs. Seizure activity may be a terminal event in non-epilepsy patients. Pulmonary oedema is a typical finding in SUDEP and there may be froth in the airway and at the mouth, with a mushroom plume present (champignon de mousse) (Figure 13.1). However, pulmonary oedema is such a common finding that it has little if any discriminatory value. Other pathology, particularly cardiac pathology, may be present that accounts for apparent seizure activity but was in fact cardiac mediated and not true epilepsy. This may be particularly important in patients who have had genetic dysrhythmic disorders that have been diagnosed clinically as epilepsy, but which are in fact cardiac in origin, such as arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy or channelopathies such as long QT syndrome. Apart from the usual macroscopic examination and sampling for microscopic examination, body fluids for toxicology, typically blood and urine if present, should be collected and submitted for analysis.
Methylation biomarker development in the context of the EU regulations for clinical use of in-vitro diagnostic devices
Published in Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics, 2019
Tomasz K Wojdacz
This type of biomarkers is especially important in cancer where early detection significantly increases the chance to cure. From the studies of carcinogenesis of various cancer, we know that methylation changes occur early if not initiate neoplastic transformation [3–5]. At the same time, it is well established that DNA from tumor is secreted and can be readily detected in body fluids that come in direct contact with the neoplastic tissue such as e.g. plasma or urine. Those body fluids are referred to as liquid biopsies. Two diagnostic tests, targeting tumor-specific methylation changes in DNA extracted from plasma are already approved to aid the diagnosis of colorectal cancer [6,7]. This type of use of methylation biomarkers is likely to have a significant impact on the management not only cancer but other diseases, especially that liquid biopsy-based diagnostic tests are characterized by minimal invasiveness.
Sources of variability in quantifying circulating thymosin beta-4: literature review and recommendations
Published in Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy, 2018
Warren K. Y. Tan, Kristy Purnamawati, Leroy S. Pakkiri, Sock Hwee Tan, Xiaoxun Yang, Mark Y. Chan, Chester L. Drum
We used the PubMed search term ‘(thymosin beta-4 OR thymosin β4 OR TMSB4X) AND <body fluid>’ with <bodily fluid> substituted by ‘plasma’ or ‘serum’ to aggregate included studies for our review. Studies dealing solely with animal data, or the N-terminus Ac-SDKP fragment (with very short circulating half-life) were excluded from the current review. We found seven plasma and 23 serum studies published between 1984 and 2017 that met our criteria. In addition, we extended the search to other bodily fluids by substituting <bodily fluid> with ‘amniotic fluid’, ‘aqueous humour’, ‘vitreous humour’, ‘blood’, ‘cerebrospinal fluid’, ‘synovial fluid’, ‘tears’, ‘saliva’, ‘wound fluid’, ‘mucus’, ‘semen’, ‘fluid’, ‘bile’, ‘urine’, ‘mucus’, ‘sputum’, ‘phlegm’, and ‘sweat’ (Supplementary Document).
A review on human body fluids for the diagnosis of viral infections: scope for rapid detection of COVID-19
Published in Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics, 2021
Sphurti S Adigal, Nidheesh V Rayaroth, Reena V John, Keerthilatha M Pai, Sulatha Bhandari, Aswini Kumar Mohapatra, Jijo Lukose, Ajeetkumar Patil, Aseefhali Bankapur, Santhosh Chidangil
Early diagnosis of diseases always benefits better treatment and faster recovery, in case of COVID-19, early quarantine, and minimization of spread of the disease. Social distancing, wearing mask, frequent washing of hands with soap, and the usage of sanitizer are the possible way to avoid the deadly epidemic. Presently, the time-consuming RT-PCR of throat swab is the gold standard for detection of COVID-19. Studies are progressing in different parts of the world to detect COVID-19 spread through different body fluids. Therefore, there is a large scope of analyzing different body fluids. Blood, saliva, urine, ocular fluids, and sputum are the major body fluids that are used for different disease diagnosis. If the swab sample can be replaced with saliva/tears, the discomfort caused due to sample collection can be avoided. Similarly, breath analysis is another promising technique where the breath VOC will give valuable information about the health conditions. Since COVID-19 mostly affect the lungs, the VOC emanating from the lungs can probably give information about COVID-19 infection including asymptomatic condition and prognosis of the patient undergoing treatment. Our brief review strongly recommends the application of saliva/tears and exhaled breath as clinical samples using technics such as HPLC-LIF, photoacoustic spectroscopy, and e-Nose, respectively, for the fast diagnosis of viral infections.
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