Compliance with a new quality standard regarding administration of prophylactic antibiotics before cesarean section.

OBJECTIVE: Administering prophylactic antibiotics before cesarean section (CS) decreases postpartum infections significantly. They should be administered within 60 min prior to CS. In 2014 the Israeli Ministry of Health introduced the administration of pre-operative antibiotic prophylaxis for CS as a quality criterion. This was immediately adopted by the Galilee Medical Center (GMC). This study aimed to examine the compliance to this quality standard in the GMC under 3 criteria: the type of antibiotics, timing of administration, and use of one dose only. STUDY DESIGN: Data of women who underwent CS from the day of introducing the new quality standard on January 1, 2014, to July 31, 2015, were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS: The study included 1790 women who delivered by elective (24.4%) or emergency CS. In general, the medical staff's compliance to this quality standard was 90.9; 95.6% of the patients received the correct antibiotic, 94.6% had it within 65 min before surgery to 5 min after it, and 100% received it in less than 24 h. There was an increase in the overall compliance rate with time (logistic regression, p = .001). During the day shift, 60.4% of CS were emergency surgeries while during the on-call shift (evening and night) almost all (99%) of the CS were emergencies (p < .001, 2-sided). In morning shift's emergency CS, only 4.1% of the cases were not given prophylactic antibiotics as against 7.8% in the on-call shift (p = .005). CONCLUSION: Over a period of 18 months, the compliance to the new quality standard of administering prophylactic antibiotics before CS was 90.9%. It was particularly high in the subgroup of elective CS during the morning shift. This high compliance rate may be attributed to the introduction of clear guidelines and assignment of a specific team member, the anesthesiologist, to administer the medication.Key pointsCompliance rate to the guideline was 90.9%.Compliance was better in the morning shift.Compliance was better for elective cesarean section.Compliance was not affected by time.

Ferritin as a Marker of Severity in COVID-19 Patients: A Fatal Correlation.

BACKGROUND: Ferritin, the cellular protein storage for iron, has emerged as a key molecule in the immune system, orchestrating the cellular defense against inflammation. At the end of 2019, the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) rapidly spread throughout China and other countries around the world, resulting in a viral pandemic. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the correlation between ferritin and disease severity in coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, we obtained clinical and laboratory data regarding 39 hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 from two hospitals in Israel. RESULTS: A significant increase in ferritin levels was demonstrated in patients with moderate and severe disease, compared to patients with mild disease (P = 0.006 and 0.005, respectively). Severe patients had significantly higher levels of ferritin (2817.6 ng/ml) than non-severe patients (708.6 ng/ml) P = 0.02. CONCLUSIONS: In this preliminary cross-sectional study, elevated ferritin levels were shown to correlate with disease severity in 39 patients from Israel with confirmed COVID-19 infection. Our results further strengthen the hypothesis that severe COVID-19 disease might be due to an underlying dysregulated hyperimmune response. In order to identify these patients early and prioritized resources, we believe that all patients with COVID-19 should be screened for hyperferritinemia.