Journal article
Predicting Clostridium difficile Stool Cytotoxin Results in Hospitalized Patients with Diarrhea
Journal of general internal medicine : JGIM, Vol.12(1), pp.57-62
01/1997
DOI: 10.1007/s11606-006-0008-0
PMID: 9034947
Abstract
To validate a model for the prediction of Clostridium difficile cytotoxin assay results, and to identify a subgroup of patients with a very low likelihood of C. difficile-associated disease in whom the yield of routine cytotoxin testing is low.Prospective cohort study. Relevant clinical symptoms, signs, and antibiotic exposure were recorded before reporting of assay results. Each predictor was assigned a score based on regression coefficients, and patients were stratified according to their total score.Two urban, tertiary care, university hospitals.A total of 609 consecutive adult inpatients who received testing for C. difficile cytotoxin during a 3-month period in 1994.The prevalence of positive cytotoxin assays was 8% in the validation set, compared with 14% in the derivation set. Defining patients without both prior antibiotic use and at least one symptom predictor (significant diarrhea or abdominal pain) as a low-risk subgroup, the misclassification rate was 2.8% (5/177) for assay results; of the five misclassified cases patients, only one was judged to have C. difficile-associated disease. Use of this rule to identify low-risk patients could have potentially averted 29% of all cytotoxin assays.Exposure to role models in a particular clinical field is strongly associated with medical students' choice of clinical field for residency training. Knowing which characteristics students look for in their role models should help identify the physicians who may be most influential in medical students' career choice.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Predicting Clostridium difficile Stool Cytotoxin Results in Hospitalized Patients with Diarrhea
- Creators
- David A Katz - Division of Clinical Decision Making, Department of Medicine, New England Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine Boston, Mass.USADavid W Bates - Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School Boston, Mass.USAEve Rittenberg - Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School Boston, Mass.USAAndrew Onderdonk - Division of Microbiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School Boston, Mass.USAKenneth Sands - Division of Infectious Diseases, Beth Israel Hospital and Harvard Medical School Boston, Mass.USALaurie A Barefoot - Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, New England Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine Boston, Mass.USADavid Snydman - Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, New England Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine Boston, Mass.USA
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Journal of general internal medicine : JGIM, Vol.12(1), pp.57-62
- Publisher
- Springer-Verlag
- DOI
- 10.1007/s11606-006-0008-0
- PMID
- 9034947
- ISSN
- 0884-8734
- eISSN
- 1525-1497
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/1997
- Academic Unit
- Epidemiology; General Internal Medicine; Internal Medicine
- Record Identifier
- 9984094496902771
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