With the increased use of antibiotics and hormones in food, it seems that pretty much every disease is getting harder and harder to treat. Diseases thought controlled, like measles, can spread like wildfire. It seems that there’s no place more likely to spread disease than your local hospital, supposedly the cleanest place around. Hospital endoscopes, which were properly cleaned, still managed to spread a bacteria-resistant superbug with a 50 percent fatality rate. Some 170 people are believed to have been exposed to the superbug known as CRE.
“There are several manufacturers for these scopes,” said Dr. Benjamin Schwartz, the LA County Department of Public Health’s deputy chief of the acute communicable disease control program. “Because of the complexity of these scopes, which is necessary for the life-saving procedures for these scopes, they are very, very difficult to clean. The manufacturer recommendations were followed by UCLA.”
The outbreak is centered at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. It turns out the manufacturer’s cleaning techniques of the delicate equipment, particularly the area around the scope’s lenses, still left bacteria in place. That bacteria, well… turns out it’s really bad stuff.
Tags: superbug, cre, ronald reagan ucla medical center, 170 exposed to superbug by dirty hospital equipment, endoscopes spread superbug, endoscopes used in medical procedures expose 170 to resistant bacteria, cre bacteria spread via endoscopes, Benjamin Schwartz
