Hospitals hoping to keep patients from picking up deadly infections should focus as much on cleaning surfaces of invisible germs as on urging staff members to regularly wash their hands, a British doctor argues.
In a commentary in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, microbiologist Dr. Stephanie Dancer of South General Hospital in Glasgow writes that clean hands can only go so far in protecting patients from such superbugs as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus).
What's just as important, she argues, is regularly disinfecting bed rails, medical equipment and even sheets.
"Even if everyone does wash their hands properly, the effects of exemplary hand hygiene are eroded if the environment is heavily contaminated by MRSA," Dancer wrote.
Dancer reviewed a number of recent studies examining the spread of MRSA and other staph infections and found the organisms can live on common surfaces for days. She notes the bugs can live on the profusion of electronic gear at a hospital patient's bedside, all of which offer hand-touch sites.
The problem, she notes, is that hospital cleaning staff tend to focus their cleaning on areas with visible dirt, such as floors. Instead, more attention should be paid to cleaning hospital furniture such as overbed tables and TV remote controls.
The cleaning does not even need to be done with industrial disinfectants: "Hot soapy water is enough," she writes.
Recommending that hospitals spend more on cleaning, she concludes: "We do not yet know exactly what impact cleaning could have on control, but this ignorance should not be used as an excuse for doing nothing."
Earlier this month, a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that 85 per cent of U.S. patients who died of an MRSA infection were infected in hospitals.
Earlier this year, the British Department of Health announced that hospital staff would no longer be allowed to wear neckties, long sleeves and jewelry, in an effort to stop the spread of deadly hospital-borne infections.
"Ties are rarely laundered but worn daily," the Department of Health said in a statement. "They perform no beneficial function in patient care and have been shown to be colonized by pathogens."
