It is well known that patients with haematological disorders are at high risk for developing infections caused by different fungi. Part of this is due to the inherent immune system defects that develop as a consequence of their haematological disorders, but the greater part of the risk can be attributed to the treatment that they receive […]
The Society of Infectious Diseases (Singapore) has organised an annual infectious diseases clinical practice update for ID trainees and GPs/family medicine trainees for years. These practice updates are invariably organised by the trainees themselves, who have the liberty therefore to set the topics and invite the local consultants they would like to listen to. Somehow, I […]
The third and final day of the conference was held two days ago on Friday 13th March. Despite all the organisational and logistic hiccups, the conference itself in my opinion (biased as that may be given that I am on the organising committee!) was a resounding success. We were lucky and many things fell into […]
The second day of the conference was well attended and went well. It started with an early opening ceremony, graced by the President of the National University of Singapore Prof. Tan Chor Chuan, as well as Mdm. Kay Kuok, who is the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Courage Fund (the main sponsor […]
The inaugural Courage Fund ID Conference kicked off yesterday evening with a series of plenary lectures at the Marina Mandarin Hotel in Singapore. This clinical and basic science infectious diseases conference is a first for Singapore in many ways: It was organised in partnership by the Singapore Infectious Diseases Initiative, the Institute for Infectious Diseases […]
The big news for antimicrobial resistance over the past week has been the decision by McDonald’s (the fast food chain) to use only antibiotic-free chicken in 2 years’ time. This will only affect the U.S. branches, although the company is also exploring phasing this in Europe. No signs of this happening in Singapore or the […]
After close to 5 years, we have finally had our Asia-Pacific epidemiological survey on invasive fungal diseases (IFDs) among patients with haematological disorders accepted for publication in the European journal Clinical Microbiology & Infection (it is unfortunately behind the infamous Elsevier pay wall!). This study was funded by the pharmaceutical giant Merck, Sharpe & Dohme, (MSD) and […]
A middle-aged woman underwent chemotherapy after being diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). She was re-admitted 4 days post-completion of #1A and #1B hyperCVAD with septic shock requiring dopamine support. Her absolute neutrophil count (ANC) was 0.02 and her initial chest X-ray was normal. She was treated with intravenous (IV) imipenem as per protocol, and blood cultures grew Pseudomonas […]
Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) looks set to becoming Singapore’s biggest antibiotic-resistant bacterial challenge for the immediate future, even more so than other members of the multidrug-resistant bacteria “alphabet soup”, viz. MRSA, VRE, XDR-AB, XDR-PA, etc. What is one unexpected consequence of having patients with CRE in our hospitals? Well, it gets into our sewage system. I have […]
The idea for this post arose from discussions and tutorials with local ID trainees, all (at least those I have contact with) of whom routinely send patients with community-acquired Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteraemia for eye screening by an ophthalmologist to “exclude endophthalmitis”, and some who apply the same practice even to patients with hospital-acquired Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteraemia. Endogenous endophthalmitis occurs as a result […]
MIPHIDIC 