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Resistant Bacterial Infection Outbreak At California Hospital
puddingebola writes From the article: "A potentially deadly "superbug" resistant to antibiotics has infected seven patients, including two who died, and more than 160 others were exposed at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center through contaminated medical instruments, the hospital revealed. The drug-resistant superbug known as CRE was likely transmitted to the Los Angeles patients by contaminated medical scopes during endoscopic procedures that took place between October 2014 and January 2015, a university statement said. " UCLA says the infections occurred via contaminated endoscopes that were sterilized according to the manufacturer's specifications.
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But, in fact, the system works. Nothing is going to be foolproof or fail safe. There will always be screw ups or just procedures that don't fix everything. However, it is telling that the hospital's surveillance systems figured out what the problem was, identified the patients at risk and presumably stopped the 'outbreak'. 32 patients, although it sounds like a lot, is probably just a couple of days worth of scopes at a big institution.
Although not clearly delineated in TFA, it appears that the problematic instruments were endoscopes used in ERCP procedures. These particular devices are at high risk of contamination due to their complex design.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm seriously regretting any anti-bacterial soap I've used over the years right about now.
Happy people make bad consumers.
And the final irony? If Ronald Reagan ran for President today, he would be kicked out of the GOP today for being too liberal.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.