Elimination of Candida albicans’ Biofilms on Intravascular Catheters

Abstract

This paper is the product of one semester’s work and research. I began the research with preliminary consultations with Professor Birthe Kjellerup and Goucher Library’s reference librarians to help my investigation of microbiology, bacteriology, and public health. After searching keyword terms such as “bacterial infections”, “disease”, and “microbiology” and cross-referencing them with the WorldCat and the Goucher College Classic Library Catalogue, I discovered there is a great amount of recent research on Candida-based infections. As I skimmed through the papers, I noticed Candida albicans infections in catheters are significant contributors to nosocomial infections. This reinforced for me the value of not only reviewing the literature on this topic, but also the necessity of proposing an optimal strategy to reduce catheter-related bloodstream infections associated with Candida albicans. I then turned to PubMed electronic database and searched for articles on the topic of eliminating bloodstream infections caused by Candida albicans in catheters. The reference lists of selected studies were examined for relevant articles, and efforts were made to find recent articles. Additionally, I made sure that the articles were primary literature and peer-reviewed. During this process, the research librarians assisted me in finding free full articles and using more common synonym search words to increase the number of eligible articles. Additionally, they aided me in using the “RefWorks” in order to keep a record of my references and citation. After finishing the research, I learned that writing a quality research paper requires a lot of work and that it is helpful to start broad and then narrow down the topic. This way, the chances of finding the topic of interest and its relevance to other disciplines increases. For me, I enjoyed collaborating with my professor and the research librarians and using various library resources and databases to prepare this work. I am greatly indebted to my professor and the library resources for this review paper, which provides current success and failure of the new preventative approaches, and their comparison to the older strategies in order to understand which preventative treatment is the most effective in controlling the catheter-related BSIs.