When attending a hospital, the expectation is to come out cured. After all, that’s the point of a hospital. However, a hospital has risks of its own and going to one can leave you sicker than when you first came in.
Hospital Acquired Infections, or HAI, are a bigger problem than some might think. Any person staying at a hospital has a chance of catching such an infection. Only about 5% to 10% of patients actually ever do. The bigger issue is that they are becoming increasingly harder to treat.
Clostridium difficile is a big example of one such “superbug”. It is a bug mainly found in medical centers, causing diarrhea, inflammation and bleeding to the colon and ultimately death. It is an infection that is immune to many antibiotics, making it all the more difficult to fight.
Antibiotics actually play a large role in keeping the disease ever present in medical centers. That lack of good bacteria happens with an overuse of antibiotics and the Clostridium difficile takes advantage of that lack of bacteria to flourish.
“Nearly 50 percent of antibiotics are inappropriately prescribed, killing off the natural protective bacteria in our gut,” said Dr. Jan Patterson, president of Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, to foxnews.com.
Bigger problems are also arising from the amount of cases of C. Difficle being reported coming from outside of hospitals. The Centers for Disease Control collected data from 700 hospitals and concluded that 52% of all Clostridium Difficle cases were present in patients when they entered the hospital.
Cases of C. Difficle and other infections like it are on the rise. HAIs are finding themselves more potent and more widespread and the trend doesn’t seem to be falling.
Such infections have been a major problem for doctors and hospitals, and aren’t just limited to hospitals in developing countries. In every medical center, there is a chance of acquiring a disease.
The CDC has come up with new techniques that would allow for doctors to better control and contain the spread of HIAs. They include doctors wearing gloves and gowns for all patient visits and quarantining any patients found to have HAIs.
New rules also require the sparring use of antibiotics and cleaning patients rooms with bleach to kill spores. In 71 hospitals these regulations were followed in, infection rate was cut 20%.
“C. difficile harms patients just about everywhere medical care is given,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said in a statement to fox.com. “Illness and death linked to this deadly disease do not have to happen.”
An important step patients should also make sure in doing is making sure that their doctors are wearing new gloves and gowns when they examine you. It is also a good idea to check out the hospitals hygiene regulations and speaking with your doctor about the chances of becoming infected with an HIA.
