Diana Huis In 't Veld

Universitair Ziekenhuis Ghent · Department of General Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases

Objectives: To assess trends in surgical site infection (SSI) incidence in cardiosurgery following a quality improvement initiative in infection prevention and control (IP&C). Methods: This is a historical cohort study encompassing a 10-year surveillance period (2014-2023) in a car-diosurgical department in a multi-organ transplant center. The stud...

Rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing of positive blood cultures can enhance antimicrobial stewardship and patient outcomes. We present a case where OXA-48-producing Klebsiella pneumoniae with low-level carbapenem resistance was suspected 6 h after blood-culture positivity, based on ASTar system (Q-Linea, Sweden) results. OXA-48 carbapenemase...

Objectives: Flucloxacillin has the most narrow spectrum to treat staphylococcal infections, but has a large variability in bioavailability which hampers its intravenous (iv) to oral switch. To identify patients with adequate absorption, the use of an oral absorption test (OAT) measuring total plasma concentrations of flucloxacillin before and afte...

Introduction In Belgium, oral HIV pre‐exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is primarily provided in specialized clinical settings. Optimal implementation of PrEP services can help to substantially reduce HIV transmission. However, insights into implementation processes, and their complex interactions with local context, are limited. This study examined fact...

Background Vancomycin is a commonly prescribed antibiotic to treat gram-positive infections. The efficacy of vancomycin is known to be directly related to the pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) index of the area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) divided by the minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the pathogen. However, in most coun...

Objectives: To identify risk factors for surgical site infections following cardiosurgery in an area endemic for multidrug resistant organisms. Design: Single-center, historical cohort study including patients who underwent cardiosurgery during a 6-year period (2014–2020). Setting: Joint Commission International accredited, multiorgan transplant ce...

Introduction: Inappropriate antibiotic use is a major cause of antibiotic resistance. Therefore, optimizing antibiotic usage is essential. In Belgium, optimization of antimicrobials for the fight against multidrug resistant organisms (MDROs) is followed up by national surveillance by public health authorities. To improve appropriate antimicrobial...

Extrapulmonary nontuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) disease remains largely enigmatic, yet these mycobacteria are increasingly acknowledged as important opportunistic pathogens in humans. Traditionally, NTM infections have been identified across various anatomical locations, with the respiratory system being the most affected and best understood. His...

Currently the effect of IL-1 blockade on ulcerative colitis (UC) is still ambiguous. This case report describes a patient with UC who developed severe complications after an episode of azathioprineinduced pancytopenia including cytomegalovirus pneumonitis, hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, and probable pulmonary aspergillosis. Imaging after the h...

The aim of this study was to assess the reliability of rapid antigen detection tests (RADT) for Streptococcus pyogenes (GAS) and Streptococcus pneumoniae on pleural fluid samples for diagnosis of parapneumonic effusion/empyema (PPE) and their potential for improving pathogen identification rates. Sixty-three pleural samples were included from 54 pa...

Background Guidelines recommend three-site (urine, anal, pharynx) three-monthly (3X3 screening) screening for Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) and Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) in men who have sex with men (MSM) taking HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). We present the first randomized controlled trial to compare the effect of screening versus non-screenin...

Background: Human cowpox virus infection is a rare zoonotic disease. Cowpox virus is a member of the Orthopoxvirus genus, like smallpox. Over the last years records of cowpox virus transmission from pet cats and pet rats to humans in Europe have increased. This observation may result from the loss of cross-immunity against orthopoxviruses after di...

Intra-abdominal infections (IAI) are common in hospitalized patients, both in and outside of the intensive care unit. Management principles include antimicrobial therapy and source control. Typically, these infections are polymicrobial, and intra-operative samples will guide the targeted antimicrobial therapy. Although the use of prophylactic abdom...

Background Model-informed precision dosing (MIPD) is an innovative approach used to guide bedside vancomycin dosing. The use of Bayesian software requires suitable and externally validated population pharmacokinetic (popPK) models. Objectives Therefore, we aimed to identify suitable popPK models for a priori prediction and a posteriori forecasting...

Objectives We extend the method of Significant Zero Crossings of Derivatives (SiZer) to address within-subject correlations of repeatedly collected longitudinal biomarker data and the computational aspects of the methodology when analyzing massive biomarker databases. SiZer is a powerful visualization tool for exploring structures in curves by mapp...

Background Since there is a high prevalence of high risk alcohol use in patients with HIV in Africa, with negative health effects, there is a need for short interventions to reduce alcohol use. Methods We studied the efficacy of a short intervention aiming to reduce alcohol use based on the Information-Motivation-Behavioural Skills Model in patien...

Objectives: We extend the method of Significant Zero Crossings of Derivatives (SiZer) to address within-subject correlations of repeatedly collected longitudinal biomarker data and the computational aspects of the methodology when analyzing massive biomarker databases. SiZer is a powerful visualization tool for exploring structures in curves by map...

This study aimed to estimate the relationship between tobacco use and non-adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) in a South African sample. Participants were 1 963 HIV patients who attended a primary care clinic in Pretoria (female = 68.5%; black African = 99.5%; median age = 37.0 years; tobacco users only = 8.6%, problem drinkers only = 14.9%,...

A high body mass index (BMI) and high waist circumference are important health risk factors predisposing for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and certain cancers. Historically, underweight was a diagnostic criterion of HIV-infection. In a cross-sectional study the prevalence of BMI-categories and high waist circumference and its associated fac...

Some infections require prolonged parenteral antimicrobial therapy, which can be continued in an outpatient setting. The Ghent University Hospital has fifteen years of experience with Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy [OPAT) in the patient own home setting. As a quality improvement initiative, this process was critically reviewed in a mul...

Alcohol use may have a negative impact on the course of HIV disease and the effectiveness of its treatment. We studied patients with HIV who use alcohol and associated socio-demographic, health and psychosocial factors. Outcomes from this study may help in selecting patients from clinical practice with high-risk alcohol use and who are likely to be...

Background: In resource-limited settings, clinical parameters, including body weight changes, are used to monitor clinical response. Therefore, we studied body weight changes in patients on antiretroviral treatment (ART) in different regions of the world. Methods: Data were extracted from the "International Epidemiologic Databases to Evaluate AI...

Background: Diagnosis of smear negative pulmonary tuberculosis (SNPTB) is challenging, especially in patients with HIV. The Botswana National Tuberculosis Program (BNTP) guidelines give guidance in diagnosing and treating SNPTB. Patients with chronic cough should be screened for TB by 3 sputum smear investigations. If negative, a chest x-ray (CXR)...

The availability of antiretroviral therapy (ART) has significantly improved the quality of life of persons with HIV infection. However, new problems have arisen as a consequence of this treatment. An immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) in which patients experience a paradoxical worsening of their clinical condition may occur during r...

Background Alcohol abuse comes with risks for increased morbidity and mortality among patients with HIV. This study aims to determine the prevalence of alcohol use and other risk factors in a sample of primary care patients with HIV in South Africa and to assess a brief intervention to reduce the use of alcohol in this group. Methods/Design A sing...

Where antiretroviral therapy is available, the primary source of mortality among HIV-infected people is the delay in starting treatment. Many of these delays occur in the context of care and are modifiable through changes in the protocols followed by healthcare providers for HIV testing, staging and preparation of patients for antiretroviral therap...

The immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) is a consequence of an excessive pathogen-specific immune recovery reaction and occurs in a subset of patients on antiretroviral therapy (ART). Infective forms of IRIS may present either as an 'unmasking' of a previously subclinical infection or the paradoxical clinical deterioration of an infe...

In 2009, giant African pouched rats trained to detect tuberculosis (TB) evaluated sputum samples from 10,523 patients whose sputum had previously been evaluated by smear microscopy. Microscopists found 13.3% of the patients to be TB-positive. Simulated second-line screening by the rats revealed 620 new TB-positive patients, increasing the case dete...

This article estimates the magnitude and quality of antibiotic prescribing in Indonesian hospitals and aims to identify demographic, socio-economic, disease-related and healthcare-related determinants of use. An audit on antibiotic use of patients hospitalized for 5 days or more was conducted in two teaching hospitals (A and B) in Java. Data were c...

Pneumonia is a common manifestation of melioidosis, the disease caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei. In this study, we defined the prognostic significance of a positive sputum culture. A total of 712 patients presenting to Sappasithiprasong Hospital, Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, with melioidosis between January 1992 and December 2002 had a sputum cu...

Pneumonia is a common manifestation of melioidosis, the disease caused by Burkholderia pseudomallei. In this study, we defined the prognostic significance of a positive sputum culture. A total of 712 patients presenting to Sappasithiprasong Hospital, Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, with melioidosis between January 1992 and December 2002 had a sputum cu...