Infections rates are comparable to other HAIs
Researchers studying epidemiology of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in community hospitals in the southeast U.S. found that rates of Clostridium difficile infections (CDI) surpassed infection rates for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Scientists also discovered that healthcare-associated CDI, which is a bacterium that causes diarrhea and more serious intestinal conditions such as colitis, occurs more often (21 percent) than healthcare-associated infections due to MRSA. In addition, healthcare-associated CDI occurs approximately as often as healthcare-associated bloodstream infections and combined device-related infections.
"Despite the amount of attention given to MRSA, our study shows that CDI has emerged as the leading healthcare-associated infection in our network of hospitals," said Becky Miller, MD, Duke Infection Control Outreach Network, Duke University. "In addition, our study likely underestimates the true scope of the problem since we did not include cases of community-onset healthcare-associated CDI."
This is the first large study to use patient level surveillance data (i.e. numerators and denominators) to compare the rates of healthcare-associated CDI and MRSA. The study was presented today at the Fifth Decennial International Conference on Healthcare-Associated Infections. Previous studies were based on estimates using hospital ICD-9-CM discharge diagnosis codes.
Dr. Miller and her colleagues studied 30 community hospitals in the Southeastern United States which are members of the Duke Infection Control Outreach Network (DICON). Over the 18-month period, which included more than 2 million patient days, researchers compared 607 cases of CDI and 508 cases of infections due to MRSA.