Over the last few years, a growing number of serious infections have been linked to bacteria forming in heater-cooler devices (HCDs) used in cardiac surgery operating rooms. In these cases, aerosolized bacteria, predominantly nontuberculous mycobacterium (NTM) from the HCDs, contaminated the operative field. Emerging evidence regarding the incidence and challenges of detecting the infections has triggered alarms at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and regulatory agencies in Europe.
Q: At our facility, we discussed in detail that under no circumstances can an opened but not used rigid container be sent from the OR to the clean side of SPD whether the patient was in room or not. Can you help with this?
Many infectious pathogens are difficult to treat because they develop into biofilms, layers of metabolically active but slowly growing bacteria embedded in a protective layer of slime, which are inherently more resistant to antibiotics. Now, a group of researchers at Caltech and the University of Oxford have made progress in the fight against biofilms. Led by Dianne Newman, the Gordon M. Binder/Amgen Professor of Biology and Geobiology, the group identified a protein that degrades and inhibits biofilms of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the primary pathogen in cystic fibrosis (CF) infections.
