Posted on 02/19/2015 5:15:11 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
It took UCLA Medical Center officials more than a month to link the hospital's first patient infected with a drug-resistant bacteria to the medical scopes at the center of an outbreak that killed two people and infected at least five others, hospital officials disclosed.
Officials said they began investigating the source of the superbug when the first infected patient was discovered in mid-December. It wasn’t until Jan. 28 -- after extensive testing -- that doctors positively linked the bacteria to the medical scopes.
On Thursday morning, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning to hospitals and medical providers that a commonly used medical scope may pose a safety threat because it is difficult to clean effectively.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
fyi
Great.
No Scoping for Dollars for you!
I guess our medical superiors are not as smart as they claim to be.
If this device can pass on super bugs then it stand to reason that it can also pass on any other disease or infection such as Aids.
Did history begin 15 minutes ago ?
Must be bonus time at the FDA .... just showing that they are on the job and doing excellent (top box on the rating form justifying the thousands of dollars in bonus money).
The sterilization failure has nothing to do with antibiotic resistant bugs especially Enterobacter which are relatively easy to kill by conventional means. Endoscopes are commonly sterilized using nebulized peroxide treatment which kill 99.9999% of bacteria, which is essentially equivalent to steam sterilization. Hospital sterilizers are routinely tested on a daily basis so I suspect the contamination may be coming from the operators.
Not really. Different mode of transmission- unless the device was still literally dripping with the previous patient's blood and secretions, and the new patient had a break in his or her wall.
Then again, it is California medicine.
My guess is it is because of operator inefficiency, in other words did they even clean the endoscopes, and if so, how well? UCLA has a C average on hospital cleanliness.
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