Volume 25: An important milestone despite continuing infection control challenges.

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

When the first volume of Infection Control was published in 1980 from an editorial office at the University of Virginia Hospital (UVA), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) had been spreading out of control since 1978 and had come to account for almost half of all nosocomial S. aureus infections at the hospital (vs only 2% being methicillin resistant in National Nosocomial Infections Surveillance [NNIS] System hospitals that year).2 Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, the founding editor of Infection Control, had been hired in 1972 as an Assistant Professor in UVA’s Division of Epidemiology and Virology with plans to become a clinical virologist. He also was assigned the responsibility of overseeing the fledgling UVA infection control program. That assignment changed Wenzel’s career. Wenzel, in turn, changed the history of infection control by founding Infection Control “to present scientifically sound investigations, reviews and articles . . . on nosocomial infections . . . and issues similar to those mentioned in communities around the globe.”3 In the first volume, most articles did not contain statistical methods sections or inferential statistics, but 6 reviews were published of the importance of using statistics and of particular statistical methods. Meetings had been held at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) in 1978 and 1979 discussing whether a new scientific society (ie, separate from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Society for Microbiology) should be formed with a clear focus on the epidemiology and prevention of nosocomial infections. In the fifth issue of Infection Control, Frank Rhame listed reasons why a new society of hospital epidemiologists might be formed and potential pitfalls that such a society would need to avoid.4 He said that two of the most important reasons were to respond collectively and perhaps more effectively to proposed legislation and regulations and to seek modification of federal research funding policies so that they would include support for research regarding the epidemiology and prevention of nosocomial infections through “a rigorous, highly academic and persistent campaign, perhaps even extending to the congressional level.”4 At ICAAC in 1980, a vote was taken and a new society, initially called the Society for Hospital Epidemiologists of America (SHEA), was created. Its first slate of officers took office in January 1981. In 1988, Infection Control became the official journal of SHEA and the journal’s name was simultaneously changed to Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. In 1993, Michael Decker became Editor and said that his goal was to have Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology “recognized as the premier journal of hospital epidemiology in all its facets.”5 He said that this would involve continuing a “strong focus on infection control, while at the same time following the injunction to ‘reach beyond nosocomial infections to the rates, distributions, preventive measures, and cost benefit studies of all adverse events in patients’ by soliciting contributions reflecting the full range of hospital epidemiology.”5 During the next 7 years, submissions of original articles more than doubled and Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology became the “most cited journal in its field” and “a convincing leader in the impact and immediacy of its publications.”6 The proportion of original articles coming from countries other than the United States and Canada increased steadily dur-