Background: Secondary hyperparathyroidism in patients with end stage renal disease on dialysis is associated with bone pain and fractures in addition to cardiovascular morbidity. Cinacalcet is the most commonly used drug to treat such patients, but it has never been compared to surgery. The goal of this study is to compare the long‐term outcomes and survival between cinacalcet and parathyroidectomy in the treatment of secondary hyperparathyroidism in hemodialysis patients.Methods: Adult patients on hemodialysis who were treated with cinacalcet or parathyroidectomy in the United States Renal Data System were included. Patients treated with surgery (n = 2023) were compared using 1:1 propensity score matching ratio to a cohort of patients treated with cinacalcet. A Cox regression analysis was conducted to compare the overall mortality.Results: The propensity score matching successfully created two groups with similar demographics. Patients in the surgery group had a higher mean peak PTH level prior to therapy (2066.8 vs 1425.4, P < 0.001). No difference was observed in the development of new‐onset coronary artery disease (7.7% vs 7.9%, P = 0.8) or cerebrovascular disease (7% vs 6.7%, P = 0.8). Surgical patients had a higher rate of pathologic fractures (27.8% vs 24.9%, P = 0.04). Survival analysis showed that patients undergoing surgery had a better 5‐year survival (65.6% vs 57.8%) and were less likely to die within the study period (HR 0.77, 95% CI 0.7–0.85, P < 0.0001).Conclusions: Patients on dialysis undergoing parathyroidectomy for the treatment of secondary hyperparathyroidism have a better overall survival than those treated with cinacalcet.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is one of the leading causes of healthcare-associated infections globally. High-risk carbapenemase-encoding P. aeruginosa clones are disseminating in many regions. The aim of this study was to learn more about the lineages and mechanisms of resistance of P. aeruginosa circulating in Peru. A total of 141 carbapenemase-producing isolates recovered from hospitalized and ambulatory patients in Lima were sequenced and analyzed to infer their lineages through whole-genome sequence typing (wgST) and to identify their antimicrobial resistance genes. wgST identified nine sequence types (STs); ST111 and ST357 were the most frequently encountered (44.0% and 38.3%, respectively), followed by ST179 (8.5%), with the remaining six detected only sporadically. Among ST357 isolates, 96.3% carried the novel bla_IMP-93 allele, whereas the remainder harbored bla_IMP-74. 74.2% of ST111 isolates co-harbored bla_IMP-18 and bla_VIM-2, while the rest carried either of these genes individually_. All other ST lineages carried a single carbapenemase, which was either bla_IMP-16, bla_IMP-74, or bla_VIM-2. Our study shows that the high-risk P. aeruginosa clones ST357, which harbors the novel bla_IMP-93, and ST111, which carries bla_IMP-18 and bla_VIM-2, have apparently become endemic in the region.

Background: Bloodstream infections continue to pose a serious global health threat due to their high morbidity and mortality, further worsened by rising antimicrobial resistance and delays in starting targeted therapy. This study assesses the accuracy and timeliness of therapeutic recommendations produced by an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven and machine-learning (ML) clinical decision support system (CDSS), comparing results based on molecular diagnostics alone with those that combine molecular and phenotypic data (standard cultures). Methods: In a prospective cross-sectional study conducted in Lima, Peru, 117 blood cultures were analyzed using FilmArray/GeneXpert for molecular identification and MALDI-TOF/VITEK 2.0 for phenotypic profiling. The AI/ML-based CDSS provided treatment recommendations in two formats, which were assessed for concordance and turnaround time. Results: Therapeutic recommendations showed 80.3% consistency between data types, with 86.3% concordance in pathogen and resistance detection. Notably, molecular-only recommendations were delivered 29 h earlier than those incorporating phenotypic data. Escherichia coli was the most frequently isolated pathogen, with a 95% concordance in suggested therapy. A substantial agreement was observed in treatment consistency (Kappa = 0.80). Conclusions: These findings highlight the potential of using AI-powered CDSS in conjunction with molecular diagnostics to accelerate clinical decision-making in bacteremia, supporting more timely interventions and improved antimicrobial stewardship. Further research is warranted to assess scalability and impact across diverse clinical settings.

Objective. To determine the diagnostic performance of blood culture positivity times for distinguishing true bacteremia from contaminants in the automated “BACT/ALERT®” system. Materials and methods. A cross-sectional, diagnostic test-type study was conducted from a database of blood culture samples processed between January 2016 and August 2021. All blood culture samples from patients with suspected bacteremia were included; blood culture samples were entered into the “BACT/ALERT®” system to differentiate true bacteremia from contaminants. Results. We obtained 33,951 blood cultures samples, of which 3875 were positive. Of the total number of positive blood cultures, 75.2% (n=2913) were true bacteremia and 24.8% (n=962) were contaminants. The median time to positivity in blood cultures with true bacteremia was significantly shorter (16.3 hours; IQR: 11.2 - 24.9) than the median time to positivity of blood cultures with contaminants (22.5 hours; IQR: 18.4 - 31.8; p<0.001). Thepositivity time showed the capacity to differentiate true bacteremia from contaminants, with an AUC-ROC of 0.73(95%CI: 0.71 - 0.75), with 85% and 63% sensitivity and specificity respectively for the diagnosis of contaminantswhen the positivity time exceeds 16.5 hours. The use of antibiotics prior to sampling delayed the time to positivity, while having fever before sampling shortened the time to positivity. Conclusions. Our results show good diagnostic performance of blood culture positivity times to differentiate true bacteremia from contaminants using the “BACT/ALERT®” system when the positivity time was longer than 16.5 hours.

Objetivo: El objetivo fue determinar la concordancia de la identificación y sensibilidad antibiótica directa del hemocultivo positivo para bacilos Gram negativos, con el sistema Vitek 2 frente al procedimiento estándar.Materiales y métodos: Para el procedimiento directo se extrajeron 8 ml de la botella de hemocultivo positivo, se inocularon en un tubo de extracción de sangre con gel separador, se centrifugó por 10 minutos a 1000g, se resuspendió el pellet con 0.5 ml de solución salina estéril y se preparó el inóculo de las tarjetas deidentificación y sensibilidad antibiótica. La concordancia de identificación se evaluó con el índice Kappa, la sensibilidad antibiótica con essential agreement (EA) y categorical agreement (CA).Resultados: El acierto de identificación (%) y el índice kappa(k) para las cinco especies más frecuentes fue : E. coli 98.0% (48/49) k=0.99, K. pneumoniae 100% (33/33) k=1.0, complejo E. cloacae 100% (13/13) k=1.0, A. baumannii 95% (19/20) k=0.97, P. aeruginosa 66.7% (8/12) k=0.79. Los valores essential agreement y, categorical agreementt para 2175 combinaciones bacteria-antibiótico fueron 97.5% y 97.1% respectivamente.Conclusión: El procedimiento directo del hemocultivo positivo muestra buena concordancia para las principales especies de bacilos Gram negativos y permite obtener resultados 16 a 24 horas antes que el procedimiento estándar.

Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 258 (ST258) is the main cause of the global spread of KPC and a significant public health problem. In 2015, ceftazidime/avibactam (CZA) was introduced as a therapeutic alternative and since it has contributed to the development of new KPC variants. Here we present the identification of two consecutive isolations of K. pneumoniae ST258 (KP1 and KP2), from a patient with urinary tract infection. KP1 and KP2 harbored bla_KPC-2 and bla_KPC-35, respectively. KP2 exhibited a modified susceptibility profile to carbapenems and resistance to CZA. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of K. pneumoniae ST258 in Peru, which highlights the increasing problem of CZA resistance.