HAIs

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending November 19.

As part of infection prevention against COVID-19, schools spent millions of federal dollars trying to upgrade ventilation systems. That money has been ill-spent, warn some experts.

One of many presentations at the ISSA Show North America 2021 this week seeks to light an entrepreneurial fire under an old concept.

No health care worker is immune from the dangers of handling sharps. Physicians hold a rate just under that of nurses, mostly related to use of scalpels, but are less likely to report these injuries.

What does the post-COVID-19 future look like for infection preventonists? Great strides in infection prevention have been made because of the COVID-19 response, but look for them to be modified moving forward.

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) bioluminescence needs technological enhancement if it’s to reach its full potential as a disinfection tool, says a study.

Doe Kley, RN, CIC, MPH,T-CHEST: “We just can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing with our singular focus on one pathogen. We know that while we were doing that—while we were so busy with COVID-19—other really dangerous and emerging pathogens got a foothold. The one that scares me the most is Candida auris.”

Darrel Hicks: “EVS teams work around professionals who are certified—whether it’s respiratory therapists, physical therapists, the RNs, the doctors—and I think if we ever hoped to elevate their status that we need to certify environmental services workers to a certain level of knowledge before they even start cleaning patient rooms.”

The use of almost every antibiotic increases the chances of Clostridioides difficile infection, and that includes the drugs that are used to treat C diff, a study states.

In order of occurrence, the most common types of HAIs are catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) at 32%; surgical site infection (SSI) at 22%; pneumonia (ventilator-associated pneumonia) at 15%; and central-line associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) at 14%.

One of the most disturbing features of C auris is that, in its relatively short life, it has rapidly developed resistance to the few available treatment options.

If we want to see sustained improvements in our hospitals, administrators must step in and visibly show their support of IPs while investing their time, resources, and hospital funding to increase the capacity of the IPC department.

Even the most rigorous infection prevention protocols come unraveled if compliance isn’t maintained. The challenge is that for busy health care professionals, remembering when and how to disinfect is just one of many competing tasks in an extremely busy day.

Infection preventionists and other health care providers need masks that can easily be fit-tested or are more moldable to ensure a good seal—Saskia v. Popescu, PhD, MPH, MA, CIC.

Preliminary data for the last quarter of 2020 revealed a jump of 34% in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) compared with the same quarter in 2019. Several states had much higher increases. In Arizona, for instance, rates leapt 80%; in New Jersey, that figure was 99%.

The CDC’s Katryna Gouin, MPH: “…[I]deally tracking antibiotic use at the facility level should be automated using either electronic health records or long-term care pharmacy dispensing data because manual tracking of antibiotics is time intensive.”

Joshua Nosanchuk, MD, Programs Chairperson for ID Week: “What the infection preventionists are doing I think is a true blessing for our community. And not always as well recognized as it should be…. I just want to say thank you to all the people that are doing this work.”

Infection preventionists across health care settings struggle with a myriad of problems during this pandemic. IPs at nursing homes have it particularly hard.

The allocations are scheduled to begin next month, with initial awards totaling $885, of which $500 million will go to what the CDC calls “strike teams” that will focus on nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

The CDC’s Runa Gokhale, MD, MPH: “I think that there is a role for infection preventionists to play here, and they are a community that we’ve been trying to engage through some of our sepsis awareness and sepsis prevention efforts.”

Patients with abnormally low blood pressure were less likely to receive antibiotics even though they could benefit from such treatment, according to a recent study.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 17.

New antifungal agents that are being investigated for possible use against C. auris, such as Ibrexafungerp (Brexafemme), show promise—so far.

With seemingly reckless abandon, we are quickly headed toward an era in which the antibiotics we once used to treat infection will be rendered ineffective.

C. diff infection is an old enemy and health care professionals have gathered an armamentarium of weapons against it, but it can be relentless.