MétaCan
Menu
← all works

Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea in a region of Quebec from 1991 to 2003: a changing pattern of disease severity

2004· article· en· 1,120 citations· W2056233231 on OpenAlex· 10.1503/cmaj.1041104

Why is this work in the frame?

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

Canadian affiliationAn author listed a Canadian institution. This is the only route the usual frame has.
Canadian venueIt was published in a Canadian venue.
About CanadaIts subject is Canada, wherever its authors sit.

Full frame distilled prediction

Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

Candidate categories
none
Consensus categories
none
Domain
Candidate signal: noneConsensus signal: none
Study design
Candidate signal: ObservationalConsensus signal: Observational
Genre
Candidate signal: EmpiricalConsensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score
0.155
Threshold uncertainty score
1.000
Validation status
machine_predicted_unvalidated · codex-gemma-dda1882f352a

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.006
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.002
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Opus teacher head0.013
GPT teacher head0.255
Teacher spread
0.242 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation status
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Recent reports suggest that Clostridium difficile colitis may be evolving into a more severe disease. During the second half of 2002 we noted an increase in the number of patients with severe C. difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD) in our institution. We describe cases of CDAD at our institution over a 13-year period and investigate changes in illness severity. METHODS: We undertook a retrospective chart review of all cases of CDAD diagnosed at the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke from Jan. 1, 1991, to Dec. 31, 2003. Because the hospital serves a well-defined population of Quebec, we were also able to calculate population-based incidence during this period. We abstracted data on individual patients from patient charts and from hospital and pharmacy computer databases. We defined cases of CDAD as having a positive C. difficile cytotoxicity assay result, or endoscopic or histopathological evidence of pseudomembranous colitis. A case was considered complicated if one or more of the following was observed: megacolon, perforation, colectomy, shock requiring vasopressor therapy, or death within 30 days after diagnosis. RESULTS: A total of 1721 cases of CDAD were diagnosed during the study period. The incidence increased from 35.6 per 100,000 population in 1991 to 156.3 per 100,000 in 2003; among patients aged 65 years or more, it increased from 102.0 to 866.5 per 100,000. The proportion of cases that were complicated increased from 7.1% (12/169) in 1991-1992 to 18.2% (71/390) in 2003 (p < 0.001), and the proportion of patients who died within 30 days after diagnosis increased from 4.7% (8/169) in 1991-1992 to 13.8% (54/390) in 2003 (p < 0.001). A high leukocyte count (20.0 small ha, Cyrillic 10(9)/L or greater) and an elevated creatinine level (200 micromol/L or greater) were strongly associated with adverse outcomes: in 2003, 45 (40.9%) of 110 patients with a high leukocyte count or creatinine level, or both, had complicated CDAD and 28 (25.5%) died within 30 days after diagnosis. After adjustment for age and other confounding factors, patients initially given oral vancomycin therapy had a risk of progression to complicated CDAD that was 79% lower than the risk among patients initially treated with metronidazole (adjusted odds ratio 0.2, 95% confidence interval 0.06-0.8, p = 0.02). INTERPRETATION: An epidemic of CDAD with an increased case-fatality rate has had important consequences on the elderly population of our region. Our observational data suggest that the equivalence of vancomycin and metronidazole in the treatment of CDAD needs to be questioned.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

The record

Venue
Canadian Medical Association Journal
Topic
Clostridium difficile and Clostridium perfringens research
Field
Medicine
Canadian institutions
Université de Sherbrooke
Funders
not available
Keywords
MedicinePseudomembranous colitisIncidence (geometry)DiarrheaToxic megacolonClostridium difficilePerforationPopulationColectomyInternal medicineRetrospective cohort studyColitisEnterocolitisDiseasePediatricsSurgeryUlcerative colitisAntibiotics
Has abstract in OpenAlex
yes