Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2015
In the last year, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published a loose-leaf manual, Guidelines for the Prevention and Control of Nosocomial Infections. One copy of the manual was sent to each hospital in the United States. Persons wanting additional copies were instructed to order them through the National Technical Information Service. In addition, the text of the manual was published in the March/April 1981, issue of INFECTION CONTROL.
The manual contained the first of several guidelines that CDC is to publish for prevention of nosocomial infections. CDC is not presently prepared to distribute these guidelines to all U.S. hospitals, but expects to be able to do so within the next 12 months.
A categorization scheme has been used to rank each of the recommendations in the guidelines. A full explanation of the scheme is in the manual and in the March/April 1981, issue of this journal.
* National Technical Information Service. U.S. Department of Commerce, 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, Virginia 22161
† Recommendations that advise against the adoption of certain measures can be found in the guidelines that follow. These negative recommendations are also ranked into one of the three categories depending on the strength of the scientific backing or opinions of the members of the working group. A negative recommendation in Category I means that scientific data or prevailing opinion strongly indicate that the measure not be adopted. A negative recommendation in Category III means that, given the available information, the measure under consideration should probably not be adopted; such a measure, however, requires further evaluation.