Curtains in patients' rooms often rife with drug-resistant germs - study

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/12/curtains-in-patients-rooms-often-rife-with-drug-resistant-germs-study

Curtains in patients' rooms often rife with drug-resistant germs – study

Nicola Davis

Fri 12 Apr 2019 06.00 BST

Privacy curtains used in patients’ rooms are often rife with drug-resistant microbes, research has revealed. Experts say that with antimicrobial resistance a growing problem, the possibility of cross-contamination between patients from such sources should be taken seriously.
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The research by Mody and colleagues, which will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in Amsterdam, involved the team taking samples from the edge of privacy curtains across six nursing homes or rehabilitation units in Michigan.

The first sample was taken when the patient was admitted, and another was taken after two weeks, one month and then every month up to six months later, with 1,521 samples collected in total: most patients stayed less than one month.

Of the 611 curtains sampled when a patient was admitted, researchers found that 28% were contaminated with drug-resistant microbes, with 5% contaminated with MRSA and 17% contaminated with vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). The team add that 18% of the subsequent 910 samples collected contained drug-resistance microbes, again with VRE the most common.
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