The Official Journal of the Turkish Society Of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (KLİMİK)
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a strain of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, spread rapidly around the world and was defined as a pandemic on March 12, 2020, by the World Health Organization. As of June 2023, more than 767 million cases were confirmed globally, along with 6.9 million deaths. Read More
The global impact of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has been profound, affecting billions of lives worldwide. As of June 13, 2024, the virus has infected approximately 704 million people and led to a staggering death toll of 7 million. In the fight against this devastating virus, the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines have been identified (...) Read More
Hip and knee arthroplasties stand out as the most prevalent surgical interventions employed to address joint deformities, predominantly stemming from osteoarthritis associated with an aging population. In Turkey, a total of 34,240 hip arthroplasties and 81,109 knee arthroplasties were conducted in 2022. Meanwhile, in the United States of America (...) Read More
Staphylococcus aureus, particularly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is a major cause of serious hospital and community-acquired infections and is associated with increased health care costs, prolonged antibiotic treatment and hospitalization, morbidity, and mortality. While glycopeptides (...) Read More
Urinary tract infection (UTI) affects approximately 150 million people worldwide every year and is encountered in all age groups. Escherichia coli, Klebsiella spp., group B streptococcus, and Enterococcus spp. are the most frequent species. The increase in antibiotic resistance rates among these agents leads to failures in empirical treatment and causes an increase in mortality, morbidity rates, and costs. Read More
The global increase in the rate of multi-drug resistant (MDR) bacterial infections in recent years is an important public health problem that limits the therapeutic options. The issue becomes particularly critical in cases of bloodstream infections (BSI) in which delay is associated with high mortality rates. Bacteria grown in blood cultures (BC) must be subcultured on the solid media (...) Read More
Infective endocarditis is a clinical condition that affects the endocardial surface of the heart, involving natural or prosthetic heart valves and intracardiac devices. It is a high-cost and high-mortality infectious disease with an increasing incidence and is more frequently diagnosed with advancing diagnostic methods. Along with well-defined cardiac (previous endocarditis, presence of intracardiac prosthetic materials, (...) Read More
Reprocessing a disposable medical device in which sterility deteriorates without contact with the blood and body fluids is called “reprocessing.” If it is ready for use by being processed again for the same or another patient, it is named reuse. The increasing number of blood-borne diseases led to the broader use of disposable instruments. Cardiac catheters, (...) Read More
Antimicrobial resistance can lead to morbidity and mortality in serious infections. Therefore, antimicrobial resistance has been accepted as a global public health problem in the 21st century. Unnecessary and excessive use of drugs is a serious problem in our country as well as in the rest of the world. Unnecessarily used drugs play an important role (...) Read More
Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection is a global health problem that the World Health Organization (WHO) reported 296 million individuals diagnosed with CHB, and 820,000 died worldwide in 2019. In our country, as per the Türkiye Viral Hepatitis Prevention and Control Program for 2018-2023, there have been 3.3 million patients with CHB infection in Türkiye. Read More
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a potentially life-threatening disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. Clinical findings of COVID-19 are ranged from asymptomatic to severe pneumoniae, acute respiratory distress syndrome, multiorgan failure and death. A severe COVID-19 course is associated with a higher inflammatory state (cytokine storm) due to the excessive release (...) Read More
Contact tracing has been recognized as a critical process in controlling infectious disease epidemics. Its objectives include early identification of potentially infectious cases and prevention of the emergence of new clusters. In the context of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, in-hospital contact-tracing efforts (...) Read More
Artificial intelligence models have influenced many branches of science in recent years. It is used in various departments of medicine. ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a text-based artificial intelligence model developed by OpenAI. ChatGPT can be used in many areas of medicine, such as to generate medical text, answer medical questions, provide recommendations for diagnosis and treatment (...) Read More
Elevated procalcitonin levels are associated with increased bacterial infection rates in children and adults. Identification of bacterial infection in previous studies has used procalcitonin thresholds of 0.5 ng/mL-1.0 ng/mL. Procalcitonin level elevations have been reported in COVID-19 patients (...) Read More
Acute lung injury and sepsis are among the severe clinical outcomes of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Risk factors raise fatality rates, increase the burden on countries’ healthcare facilities, and significantly increase health expenditures due to prolonged inpatient periods. Several studies have revealed a severe illness course in COVID-19 patients, especially in males, older age, and comorbid (...) Read More
Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) is an enveloped, single-stranded ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus in the genus Metapneumovirus. In 2016, the Pneumoviridae family replaced Paramyxoviridae as a new classification for this virus. Read More
Influenza-like illness (ILI) can be caused by a range of respiratory viruses in adults. Influenza is one of the most important respiratory viruses that affects all age groups and can lead to hospitalizations. Severe influenza and complications can cause significant morbidity and mortality during pandemics, epidemics, and sporadic outbreaks. Therefore, influenza (...) Read More
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is an important public health problem worldwide. It is the most important cause of acute and chronic liver disease and hepatocellular cancer. Hepatitis B infection is diagnosed by the detection of HBsAg in the serum or plasma. Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection is defined as the persistence of (...) Read More
Posaconazole is a systemic extended-spectrum triazole mainly licensed for prophylaxis of invasive fungal infections (IFIs) in high-risk patients. Three formulations of posaconazole are currently available, including an oral suspension (40 mg/mL), a delayed-release gastric-resistant (...) Read More
Human adenovirus (HAdV) is a non-enveloped, double-stranded DNA virus that causes self-limiting respiratory system infections, gastrointestinal tract infections, conjunctivitis, and meningitis. These infections are generally observed throughout the year with no seasonal distribution. Despite being self-limiting, HAdV infections (...) Read More