After a great few days at ECCMID conference in Madrid, I thought I would give some highlights. There were many good sessions and presentations, but I have picked a few that stood out for me. To set the scene, for those who haven’t been to ECCMID, it is huge. Around 15,000 delegates and 15+ sessions going at any one time. The poster area is the size of a airport hanger. Planning is key.

Petra Gastmeier contributed to many pieces of work at the conference, but on the first day, presented on “Before an outbreak – is complete sanitation of robotic surgical instruments possible?”. She discussed two key outcomes when answering this question. First, is the instrument clean or not; second, does the instrument affects surgical site infection rates. Her talk concluded by with the concept that at present, based on literature, robotics instruments do not appear to increase SSI rates. However, a strong CSSD is required.  Maybe the reasons is that the process includes disinfection and sterilisation. The presentation can be viewed here.

John Rossen discussed whole genome sequencing in outbreaks. Challenges and advantanges of WHS were discussed. One issue is the cost and turnaround time. He discussed his work, which involved used WGS to develop a local PCR test – to distinguish outbreak strains from others. This overcomes the cost and timeliness issues. The presentation can be viewed here

Jon Otter, always great to listen to, was heavily involved in the conference. If you haven’t seen his blog, make sure you check it out (but don’t forget us). Jon always makes his work available on the blog as well.  I have picked one of Jon’s talks,” Before an outbreak – what to do after first MDR Gram-negatives enter your hospital?”. A great interactive session with live voting. There was variation from the audience, with respect to what products (chlorine or HP) are used for control CPE. A key take home from me, was that cleaning and sinks, are a key issue. There was quite a strong focus on the role of sink in MRGN control at the conference. The presentation can be viewed here.

Ben Cooper talking about modelling. Some key things from his talk were – ‘models help us think’. I really like that motto. Time series analysis are good, but poorly analysed. The way of the future is to use models to design high quality RCTs. His presentation can be viewed here.

In something close to my heart, given some studies I am involved with, was a talk by Marc Bonton (@MarcBonten) on pragmatic trial designs. Some key takes homes: consider the natural history of the disease. It is easily to find an intervention that works, if the infection rates was trending down anyway. Cluster RCTs are good, but consider selection bias and carry over effects. His presentation can be viewed here.

There was a session that had short presentations on current / early research findings. Many topics were covered, from hand dryers to risk factors for predicting ESBL carriers. Sessions topics and presentations are here.  One stand out me, for novelty, was a study that explored norvirus dispersal. It is worth a look.  Norovirus was spilt in a laboratory, then cleaned. Results are very interesting. The presentation by Caroline Lopes Ciofi-Silva is worth seeing as you get a real sense of what they did. I feel for those who cleaned up the norovirus – I wonder if they got sick??

There was also an interesting study exploring contact precautions Vs standard precautions, involving 30,000+ patient in 20 non ICUs – to determine any difference in EBSL acquisition. Findings are suggesting no difference, but the key for me, is whether the rooms were single rooms. If so, they would probably would not expect to find any difference. If the ICUs were single rooms, then I think we are none the wiser – especially as most hospitals are not 100% single rooms. If there were shared rooms, this may be the catalyst to rethink contact precautions.

There was also a great “Year in review” for infection control. I could never do this justice and it is worth seeing the presentations. Hilary Humphreys presented first and went through a mountain of papers. Looking forward to hearing Hilary again at ACIPC 2018 in Brisbane.

There is plenty I have missed. You can use the ECCMID live website to find and view other presentations. I also tweeted about other presentations. Speaking of Twitter, there were some great interactions on Twitter at the conference, including those who were not present. It is a great way to find out they key discussion points at conferences.