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Comic carries hygiene message

Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) officials are hoping a new comic book will help raise awareness about hand hygiene and hospital-acquired infections, such as Clostridium difficile.

The Bug Stops Here! will be released Sept. 23 at a free public event at the hospital. The comic book is for staff and visitors and is produced by PRHC.

The nine-page book is about a young girl named Sammy who goes to the hospital to visit her sick grandmother.

Along the way she learns about C. difficile, hand washing and other ways to prevent catching infections.

Full Article: here.

Scotland’s health secretary has ordered an independent public inquiry into a fatal outbreak of Clostridium difficile at a Dunbartonshire hospital.

A total of 55 people at the Vale of Leven hospital were affected by the infection, and 18 patients died, between December 2007 and June 2008.

An initial review of procedures at the hospital found “inadequate” infection controls.

Full Article:  C.diff deaths inquiry announced

The definition of an “outbreak” was recently called into question, when a number of patients at St. Joseph’s Healthcare acquired c.difficile — but in a pattern which didn’t exactly match reporting guidelines.

This caused confusion within the hospital over whether to declare an outbreak situation, as well as highlighting the delay between an identified rise in infections, and when the public finds out about it.

Eventually, all outbreaks get reported in each hospital’s monthly filing on a public website set up by the Health Ministry. But it could be a month before the public hears about it, Baker acknowledges. Hundreds of patients and visitors could pass through a hospital in that time.

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One definition says an outbreak occurs when three or more new cases appear within seven days in one ward. It is also an outbreak when six or more cases occur within 30 days in a single ward or unit.

But at St. Joe’s, the current C. diff outbreak was not confined to one ward. Cases were spread through the hospital.  Chief of staff Dr. David Higgins says that made it difficult to establish whether St. Joe’s was in outbreak or simply faced a seasonal rise in C. diff.

“That’s why we agonized over this for several days,” says Higgins.

Full article: What makes it an oubreak?

Five seniors with C. difficile have died at St. Joseph’s Hospital in the last month.

That is nearly one in three of those who got the bacterial infection that causes severe diarrhea.
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C. diff is one of three outbreaks St. Joseph’s Healthcare is currently battling.

Another senior died during the first week of March from invasive Group A streptococcus, which was spreading on the geriatric psychiatry unit at the Centre for Mountain Health Services.

Three wards remain closed to visitors at the downtown hospital as St. Joseph’s tries to contain the Norwalk virus.

Full Article:  Three St. Joe’s patients die of C. diff since April 1

In a study funded by NIH, Harvard Medical School, and the Irish Health Research Board, researchers have found a method to accurately predict which patients will experience a recurrence of C.difficile infection:

The method correctly identified 77.3% of patients who had recurrent infection in a derivation cohort studied in 1998, according to Ciarán P. Kelly, M.D., of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues.

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C. difficile has become the leading cause of hospital-acquired infectious diarrhea. It affects millions of patients a year. Multiple recurrences are common, despite successful treatment of the initial episode

“This rule is valuable in clinical practice as it defines a high-risk population in whom awareness of the risk can facilitate more prompt recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of recurrent C. difficile,” Dr. Kelly said in a statement.

The rule combines three variables: age, disease severity, and antibiotic use.

Full article:  Clinical Rule Predicts C. Diff Recurrrence

‘Super’ C. difficile outbreak linked to deaths of 13 patients

The particularly virulent new strain of C. difficile responsible for the outbreak, known as 027, can produce 20 times as much toxin as others, is known to cause a higher mortality rate and is resistant to several drugs used to combat the infection.