Metronidazole can rarely cause central nervous system toxicity; it does not seem to be a dose- or duration-related phenomenon. Most patients will have MRI abnormalities. Prognosis is excellent with metronidazole cessation.

Cefmetazole may be a useful option for the treatment of UTIs caused by ESBL-producing organisms. Prospective and larger sized studies are needed to confirm our findings.

No abstract

The hand hygiene adherence in Japanese teaching hospitals in our sample was low, even lower than reported mean values from other international studies. Greater adherence to hand hygiene should be encouraged in Japan.

BACKGROUND Though hand hygiene is an important method of preventing healthcare‐associated infection, we found suboptimal hand hygiene adherence among healthcare workers in 4 diverse Japanese hospitals (adherence rates of 11%–25%). OBJECTIVE Our goal was to assess multimodal hand hygiene intervention coupled with a contest to improve hand hygiene adherence. SETTING A total of 3 to 4 inpatient wards in 3 Japanese hospitals. DESIGN Pre‐post intervention study. INTERVENTION The intervention was a multimodal hand hygiene intervention recommended by the World Health Organization that was tailored to each facility. The hospital with the highest adherence after the intervention was given $5000 US dollars and a trophy, provided by an American coinvestigator unaffiliated with any of the Japanese hospitals. MEASUREMENT We tracked hand hygiene adherence rates before patient contact for each unit and hospital and compared these to pre‐intervention adherence rates. RESULTS We observed 2982 postintervention provider‐patient encounters in 10 units across 3 hospitals. Hand hygiene adherence rates were improved overall after the intervention (18% pre‐ to 33% postintervention; P < 0.001), but postintervention adherence rates varied considerably: hospital A + 29%, B + 5%, C + 8%. Hospital A won the contest with 40% adherence after the intervention. CONCLUSIONS Using a novel contest coupled with a multimodal intervention successfully improved hand hygiene rates among Japanese healthcare workers. Given the overall low rates, however, further improvement is necessary. Journal of Hospital Medicine 2016;11:199–205. © 2015 Society of Hospital Medicine