Clostridium difficile Infection Guideline Updates Webinar

Unless otherwise noted, P.A.C.E.™ accreditation will expire six months after the live webinar.

Clostridium difficile infection(CDI)causes intestinal inflammation that can lead to serious and life-threatening illnesses. In a healthcare environment like a hospital or nursing home, Clostridium difficile can easily spread through contaminated surfaces or person-to-person contact, and in the U.S., it’s linked to more than 30,000 deaths per year. C. difficile infections pose a serious threat and require rapid clinical decisions.

During the past several years, the focus of C. difficile testing has moved from organism identification to a renewed interest in detecting the toxins that cause the disease. The incidence of patients who are simply colonized with C. difficile is five to ten times the number of patients with active CDI, and treating carriers is often ineffective and may even increase the risk of the patient developing CDI.

In this P.A.C.E.-accredited Fisher Healthcare™ webinar, Erik Dubberke, MD, MSPH, will review the updated 2017 CDI treatment guidelines and recommendations from the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), describe how those updates apply to patient populations, and demonstrate how the microbiology laboratory can assist in preventing CDI.

Learning Objectives

This webinar will help you:

• Interpret the updated 2017 IDSA/SHEA CDI guidelines and treatment recommendations
• Apply the updated 2017 IDSA/SHEA CDI guidelines and recommendations for C. difficile diagnostics to your patient population
• Identify the role of the microbiology laboratory in preventing CDI

Watch On Demand      Download Slides

This webinar is produced by Whitehat Communications, a provider of continuing education programs in clinical laboratory sciences that has been approved by the ASCLS P.A.C.E. Program. One P.A.C.E. credit hour will be provided for this complimentary, basic-level program.

Erik Dubberke, MD, MSPH

Dr. Dubberke is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, where he has been a faculty member in the Division of Infectious Diseases since 2005. His main research interests are the epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of Clostridium difficile infections. He is the lead author of the CDI component of the SHEA Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals, and serves as a member of the panel to update the SHEA/IDSA CDI clinical guidelines.