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Subscribe to RSSNearly half of hospital rooms of patients infected with drug-resistant strains of Acinetobacter baumannii are contaminated with the bacteria, a small new survey shows. Surfaces such as bedrails, drawer handles and touchpads are particularly prone to harboring the germ.
That could pose big problems for hospital staff and future patients if existing cleaning practices don’t get rid of one of the top 10 germs responsible for serious health care-acquired infections, said Dr. Kerri A. Thom, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.
“Fairly frequently we find these important pathogens are inhabiting these high-touch surfaces,” said Thom, noting that previous studies have detected surface contamination with bugs responsible for worrisome MRSA and Clostridium difficile infections.
“This does reflect a potential source of transmission of bacteria from one patient to the next.”
Thom and her team analyzed rooms of 50 intensive care patients infected with multi-drug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii, a strain of bacteria increasingly responsible for hard-to-treat infections in soldiers returning from combat – and in hospital critical care units.
Testing of 10 sites in each room – door knobs, bedrails, ventilator touch pads, floors and more – found at least one area was colonized with A. baumannii bacteria in 48 percent of rooms.
Supply cart drawer handles were most commonly contaminated, with 20 percent testing positive, followed by floors, infusion pumps and touch pads. Ten percent of bedrails harbored the germs, according to the study published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Infection Control.
Most of the strains of bacteria found in the rooms – 85 percent – matched the strains in the patients themselves, the study found.
While that raises chicken-and-egg questions about whether the contamination caused the infection or vice-versa, it also points to the importance of good hospital cleaning practices, said Russell Olmsted, an infection control expert and president of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.
“What looks clean might actually be contaminated,” said Olmsted, noting that more hospitals have increased efforts to double-check that all surfaces in patient rooms are thoroughly disinfected. "This is a tough bug."
Acinetobacter baumannii poses a particular problem because it’s a hardy strain that can survive for days, even months on inanimate surfaces, Olmsted said. Most hospital cleaners can disarm it, but crews must be careful to reach every spot -- especially those in high-traffic areas.
Patients worried about lingering bacteria in hospitals might be tempted to resort to do-it-yourself disinfection, but they should resist the urge, said Olmsted and Thom.
Bringing your own bleach spray or wipes could cause problems by clashing with other hospital cleaning products or interfering with some kinds of medical equipment.
Instead, patients or their family members can inspect a room before getting settled, making sure to look for obvious lapses in cleanliness. They can ask staff to verify that a room has been cleaned. And they can make sure to request that all health workers wash their hands before providing any kind of care.
“The message that we’re sending overall to patients is to be an advocate for their own care,” Thom said. “It’s OK to ask.”
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I would think hospitals could deal with this. Perhaps something as simple as frequent wiping of these sufaces with a disinfectant would be the solution.
I'll wipe down my own darn hospital room with bleach wipes whenever I want to (or my significant other if I'm bedridden). I'll be darned if any hospital employee tries to tell me I can't! And I'll use every hand sanitizer dispenser I pass in the hallways and on desks if I wish.
I had a good friend die of a hospital-acquired infection while she was being treated for swine flu.
Moral: Stay out of hospitals.
Cinnamon Oil!!!
It's a natural antimicrobial that the bacteria cannot develop resistance to! Some hospitals are already using it all surfaces!
without strict testing and sanitation protocol of all people, including patients, in the hospital this will happen regardless.
If you want to stay healthy, stay away from hospitals.
This company has the solution to this - BIOLARGO.COM - Their chemical compound (environmentally safe) kills virus/bacteria completely, therefore eliminating future strains with greater resistance. The amazing thing is the byproduct is totally safe - not like all the disinfectants... I wish the big companies would get a hold of these guys!!!
We pay so much for healthcare and the hospitals save a buck on the basics! It is the frequent wiping of these surfaces with disinfectant that creates these super bugs. Simple steam cleaning kills them all. But, of course, the hospital would have to spend some money to do it right. Easier to kill a few ten of thousands every year than have stockholders lose a nickle or two. This is a story of greed, pure and simple.
Stockholders? What stockholders? Almost all hospitals are either publicly owned or are non-profits. They have no stockholders, and generate no money beyond costs of operation. Are you willing to pay an extra $500 per month for your health insurance to cover the costs of "simple" labor intensive steam cleaning of every door handle, every touch pad, every drawer pull, every floor, etc., each day? Don't try to pass this off on corporations; it's the cost of having 330,000,000 people in the country, each of which is a potential host for other organisms, bacteria and viruses. It is a medical problem, and not a political one.
Um, I'm sorry, but to think that simple steam cleaning will kill them all is simply crazy, and proves you know absolutely nothing about microbiology.
i have noticed that mostly unhealthy people frequent hospitals,but back on topic,the more we fight what is going to kill us,the poorer we are in our living years.the health profession is going to collapse someday,then we can start living.breath lot`s of fresh air,make your body work and try to stay away from people wearing suits.but have fun first and don`t hold a grudge.
?? mostly unhealthy people frequent hospitals ?? - Ya think?? ;-)
Simple steam cleaning papa...what's your source on this? Glad you're not responsible for my healthcare. Think things are bad now, wait for Obamacare to kick in, with all the cuts and higher costs and death panels, and like that.
got a pot full of mussles and some friends with booze around,shell food is so bad for your your heart that most people should not indulge.i might die tomorrow but i`m eating and drinking tonite.
Having picked up a septic infection, during back disc fusion therapy and having lost most of the use of my left leg, from same, I am very, very leary of hospital safety. I have since learned of many hospital staph infections at the same hospital. I was in the hospital for two months and physical therapy for eight months.
I should point out that the hospital professes no liability, you should expect that you can get an infection in a hospital.
I should also point out that this hospital, according to state records, rates better than most, for a low incidence of infections.
According to infection control experts hospitals should be capable of eliminating infections in their facilities, for the fees they charge this seems reasonable.
As I understand it, rife means full to bursting. That is hardly the case here. MRSA is to be taken seriously, but it is not capable of filling a hospital room.
Just lost a next door neighbor due to MRSA picked up during an elective surgery. Well, the lingering death in exchange for something she could live without sure wasn't worth it. It also identifies the hospital as an infection reservoir to be avoided.
Does this allow for carrying your own battery of Petri dishes in, doing a swab of all likely areas of contamination and submitting them to an independent laboratory prior to being admitted? Better have your microscope and staining agents available to be able to literally see if anything's amiss, a visual inspection with anything less doesn't tell you the place is clean.
I was thinking the exact same thing! More often than not it is not the room that is the problem but other people and [patients. However I would think the least a hospital could do is check the room properly themselves.
burn them all down and rebuild...
An MD.once said that a hospital is the worse place to recover ! To much dirt and germs breed in all hospitals . The room cleaners are the biggest cause of it . While in hospital,a room cleaner cleaned the room ,three days later I asked does the door have a hinge ? the cleaner said yes , so I asked why did you not move it to clean behind the door ? The answer was it did not look dirty .. another downfall to our medical world ..
If hospitals get disinfectant wipes which carry these super-bugs, then it is probably time for the soap and water, elbow grease and real care which is needed. Unfortunately, corporate hospitals look only at the bottom line - no cash for cleaners or cleansers - and if patients die - We remember ther Russian motto - Toughski @!$%#ski. And if sick people die, then good , less reason to tax my 1%.
Wally:
Death panels...yeah, that's the problem. What will you and Michele Bachmann think of next? You'd better hope that your MD and RN have degrees in steam cleaning when your time comes.
Why hasn't anyone mentioned the incredibly misleading title of the article? "Half of hospital rooms rife with drug-resistant bug, study finds." But according to the article, it was half of all rooms of patients who were *already* infected with the same bacteria. The article does not mention what percentage of total patients in an intensive care unit are typically infected with this bacteria (which is obviously not 100%). People who don't read the article might presume that half of all hospital rooms in general are contaminated with the bacteria. Hospitals are breeding grounds for infection, but not quite to the extent that the title would suggest.
A few years ago I dated a nurse in LA who was infected with MRSA. The hospital knew it but continued to allow her to work in surgery even.
most people have some MRSA on them at any given time; all of us have Staph aureus on our skin (the 'SA' of MRSA). MRSA infection is more likely to happen when the immune system is compromised or the skin has been violated (surgery, injury, IV). most seriously ill patients at our hospital are given a nasal swab within 4 hours of admission, and a staggering number come back with MRSA of the nares (nostrils)- that means they had it when they came in. there is no denying that there are lots of nasty germs in hospitals, and people in them are at high risk of infection due to whatever brought them there. but hospitals DO care about people getting these germs- when it's proven to be hospital acquired, more often than not the stay is then NOT reimbursed by the insurance or Medicare. not to mention that we really DO actually want you to get better and walk out the front door and back to your life
people are dirty; you all seem to have already forgotten the study from a couple of weeks ago that said 15% of you have fecal material/germs on your cel phones. you didn't get that sh!t on your phones from the hospital, did you?
The hospital has a responsibility to insure the nurse is free of MRSA so she is not a risk is the patients especially if she is working in the OR. Also most people do not really carry MRSA most of the time.
Around 20% of the population are carriers of S. aureus, with the carriage rate of MRSA hovering around the 3-6% mark, although this differs between western and non-western countries. The majority of MRSA infections are hospital acquired this can be shown by the infecting MRSA not matching the carriage strain or the patient not carrying this bacteria at all.
Research has found the majority of MRSA strains are associated with health care facilities and the majority of non-MRSA strains are community based.
OK.. quick lesson on MRSA. Being a 'carrier' of it doesn't mean you can't work as a nurse or anything else. I'd bet that about 50% of hospital staff has MRSA. However... carriers have a 'dormant' MRSA. It's not active, and no one's getting it. Thing of herpes.... you know..cold sores?? You are a carrier of herpes for life. Doesn't mean you have an active infection. It means you were exposed to it at some point and you're now a carrier. Same goes with TB. You can have a positive test, but that only means you were exposed to it. Doesn't mean you're ill or that you can spread it. There's no reason why a person that's been exposed can't continue to work. There are TWO MRSA tests that can be done with a nasal swab. One for a person who's been exposed to it and one for those who haven't. Without an active infection, a positive test means nothing.
Krestov, try 65-80% of the population at any given time. There is no possible way that a hospital could daily, and after every single patient, ensure that the nurse or nurses aid or physican is free of all times of pathogens. It is impossible.
MRSA only becomes a problem for people who are already immuno-compromised, their bodies not able to fight off an infection, thus the reason you hear about it in hospitals so often. It is transmitted easily by the hands of health care workers if they do not use adequate hand cleaning practices from an infected patient to the next patient.
If this isn't addressed, hospitals will once again become the dreaded places people go to die.
Last year two people that lived on my street died from staph infection they acquired in our new hospital. They lived 4 houses apart. One was an 87 year old woman who went in to have a biopsy of a lump in her breast. The other was a 59 year old man who went in for hernia surgery. They died within 6 days of entering the hospital. They died the same week. We attended their funerals. My mother died from e-coli she got while in hospital for flu. My cousin died in May from staph after hernia surgery at a Military Hospital in Texas. He had just retired after 31 years in the air Force. He ended up losing a leg and a hand and being put on a waiting list for a heart transplant. He was 53. Something has to be done. I remember going to hospitals to visit people and smelling rubbing alcohol and that stench of the Lysol the janitorial staff used. Now you don't smell anything. I carry a bar of good old dial soap and a small bottle of bleach water with me at all times now. That foam stuff they push as a sanitizer is hard to rinse off. My opinion is it probably doesn't kill germs and might attract even more. Dial soap rinses clean.
It's unfortunate that the infections have happened - I'm sorry for your losses. Staph aureus and other bacteria (lots of them) live on people - even when people are healthy. This is part of what makes "disinfecting" hospital rooms difficult. Clostridium difficle, one of the resistant bacterias that this article mentions - normally lives in almost everyone's digestive tract without causing problems. Usually there is some e. coli in there too (only certain strains tend to cause food borne infections). Most people have a lot of bacteria inside them and on them all the time. The bacterias themselves are not usually the problem, but these two (c. diff and e. coli) tend to become big problems with a person is on antibiotic therapies - many antibiotic agents indiscriminately kill off good (or typically occurring) bacteria leaving room for the not so good bacterias to set up shop.
I work in a hospital (have worked in several actually) - and I still think they smell like cleaning supplies. At the hospital I work at, we actually have what amounts to industrial strength Lysol wipes. You have to wear gloves to use them on equipment - otherwise the length of exposure that would cause a chemical burn is something like (I believe) less than two minutes.
It's interesting that your solution is carrying a bar of dial soap - bacteria is typically more likely to live on the surface of the soap than it is to grow in the alcohol rub commonly used in hospitals. The rub works - because it's something like 90% alcohol (in most cases) but you are supposed to wash your hands after using that stuff like 6 or 8 times. I am pretty sure that it kills bacteria on my hands - that stuff is so strong that it damages my hands. I work three 12 hour shifts a week and my hands are red, cracked and raw by the end of the first day. That's with me washing my hands more often than using the sanitizer.
You aren't supposed to wash the foam off! If it's the alcohol stuff, it's to be used in place of soap and water on 'clean' hands. However, it does NOT kill C-diff!! I know in one hospital I worked at, the pump was covered if a patient had C-diff so no one would use it. Only soap and water (used properly) will keep that from spreading. The cleaning supplies used in the hospitals I've worked at don't have that smell to them... BUT they are industrial disinfectants that will kill every kind of bug out there. Don't let the lack of smell fool you. Due to scent sensitive patients, the things used in hospitals aren't strong smelling anymore. I've worked in many different hospitals, and although they have different procedures for cleaning rooms and medical equipment, it comes down to the person doing the cleaning. Unfortunately, nearly every housekeeper I've seen has been a poor african american and they do a horrible job. There's a lack of training, and a HUGE lack of adequate staffing. Nearly every single hospital I've worked at has ONE housekeeper at night for the entire hospital! So they cut corners, rush through what they're doing because they're getting calls from every part of the hospital and getting a lot of attitude. The hospitals care about one thing... MONEY! That drives every decision they make, and it's hurting people. Until we get rid of private insurance and go to a one payer system, this isn't going to change. If you really want to blame something for this, blame capitalism!!
No, you don't wash the foam off immediately. But you DO have to wash your hands after using the foam so many times. At some point, the amount of dried foam on your hands means that you do need to wash your hands. No it does not kill C-diff, but many other things, it does kill.
I would agree that staffing does affect cleaning of hospitals. And I agree with the comment about insurance and cost.
Yikes!
The article says it's okay to ask the hospital staff to wash their hands and clean the room. Sounds very simple. But why should anyone even have to ask?? If hospital workers are so irresponsible, or the hospital is so poorly managed that they have to be asked by the patients to please do their job correctly, then what makes anyone believe that they will completely comply with the patients request??
the article didn't say that the hospital will ONLY clean the room, or the healthcare providers will ONLY wash their hands if you ask! the aim of that whole statement was that if YOU will feel better protected by seeing these things done with your own eyes, then by all means ask for them.
Thanks Allie! When I saw the first comment here that was my thought and you beat me to the reply!
Honestquestions - where I work, rooms are spot cleaned while a given patient stays in a room (usually the floors, toilet and other commonly used areas are cleaned) daily. More intensive cleaning only occurs between patients. We've established that bacteria live on people - so somewhere during a stay of several days or more, cleaning a patient's room more completely might be a good idea. Bacteria visitors bring in, bacteria from the patient - there are numerous sources these organisms might be coming from.
It's been regarded that hand washing (soap and water or alcohol rub) is the best mechanism one can use in preventing the spread of bacteria and viruses. I have to wonder - with as many times as my coworkers and I have to wash our hands daily - would it be a good idea to have visitors wash hands as well? Not that it would be easy to enforce it (I know I have better things to do than be the hand washing police) but it might help...
Once again, whoever writes the headlines at msnbc seems to have failed miserably. The headline clearly suggests that half of ALL hospital rooms are infected. To whomever is responsible for this latest outrageously misleading headline, please read the first sentence of the article, which says, "Nearly half of hospital rooms OF PATIENTS INFECTED WITH DRUG-RESISTANT STRAINS OF ACINOBACTER BAUMANNII are contaminated with the bacteria."
I'm sure this is a problem, but I can't say it's particularly surprising that in a room where a patient harbors a particular pathogen, that pathogen proliferates within that room, at least while the patient is there (and apparently a while afterward in the case of this pathogen).
The headline obviously overstates the problem drastically, and one can see from many of the comments here (e.g., "stay out of hospitals") that readers have (again) been misled. Staying out of hospital rooms where a recent patient had acinobacter baumannii would probably make sense based on this study, but staying out of hospitals in general could kill you.
Once again, a ridiculously misleading and irresponsible headline could lead to readers making bad decisions. To whomever writes the headlines - for the umpteenth time - for the love of God, don't write a headline unless you (carefully) read and understand the article. In the case of an article like this, it's actually potentially dangerous.
As a 'retired' ICU nurse, I can tell you exactly what the problem is! It's cutting back on cleaning staff AND that the cleaning staff does a TERRIBLE job!! They hire whoever and don't have supervisors to check on how they do. I know when we found a cleaning person that did a good job, we always told them so! However, it seemed like a lot of our cleaning staff were uneducated and had no idea WHY they had to clean carefully! I think that hospitals need to do a better job of staffing, hiring, and training. It's not that we don't have the cleaning solutions to kill these bugs... we do! However, the people responsible for cleaning the rooms don't care or don't know how to clean properly! I know that we've been so concerned at times that we (nurses) went in and cleaned the room again after the cleaning person was done because we actually saw that the room was cleaned in less than five minutes and we knew a person with a bad infection had been in there. Please don't blame the nurses! We DO wash our hands, wipe surfaces, and are very careful about spreading germs. However, we don't run the hospitals and we aren't able to clean every room ourselves. We complain when we notice a bad cleaner, but a good one is NOT the 'norm'!
OK, let get to the facts. Cleaning personnel have been blamed for cleaning for years. Their not the problems. We use Phenols, Quats, and all the others types and the problem is simple. Bacteria have become resistant to want we clean with after years of Dirty Clean water used in every way possible. Now listen for once....When you culture a touch area, floor or any things not human you swab the germ put it in a broth culture it for 24 hours and WOW you have a colonized germ to ID. If you would have never swabbed anything then it wouldn't have any way to grow. It would lay dormit waiting for a food source like WATER in a bucket or micro fiber. 99.9% kill is a myth that chemical company have played of all of us for year. If you simple remove the dust, spots and smudges. Things stay clean. Understand this by the time you culture a touch area and ID the bacteria 10 seconds later or when someone touch it, WOW you have bacteria again and it could be any kind. Water is food for bacteria, disinfectant that we use don't kill as you think. Nurses, Doctors, Microbiologoist have tried for year to tell cleaning people how to clean....Take care of the patient and leave the cleaning to Cleanologist. Yes we need more education for our people but not from people who nothing about the cleaning profession. This is short but the problem is chemical resistant bacteria thanks to all of you that think you know more about cleaning and Chemical Companies try to sell there JUICE......Thanks you.
OK, let get to the facts. Cleaning personnel have been blamed for cleaning for years. Their not the problems. We use Phenols, Quats, and all the others types and the problem is simple. Bacteria have become resistant to want we clean with after years of Dirty Clean water used in every way possible. Now listen for once....When you culture a touch area, floor or any things not human you swab the germ put it in a broth culture it for 24 hours and WOW you have a colonized germ to ID. If you would have never swabbed anything then it wouldn't have any way to grow. It would lay dormit waiting for a food source like WATER in a bucket or micro fiber. 99.9% kill is a myth that chemical company have played of all of us for year. If you simple remove the dust, spots and smudges. Things stay clean. Understand this by the time you culture a touch area and ID the bacteria 10 seconds later or when someone touch it, WOW you have bacteria again and it could be any kind. Water is food for bacteria, disinfectant that we use don't kill as you think. Nurses, Doctors, Microbiologoist have tried for year to tell cleaning people how to clean....Take care of the patient and leave the cleaning to Cleanologist. Yes we need more education for our people but not from people who nothing about the cleaning profession. This is short but the problem is chemical resistant bacteria thanks to all of you that think you know more about cleaning and Chemical Companies try to sell there JUICE......Thanks you.