UCLA study identifies risk factors for bacteria transmission from tainted scopes

Over the past few years, medical scopes contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria have caused hundreds of patients who underwent a specific gastrointestinal procedure to become sick. Now, UCLA physicians have identified factors that increase the likelihood of these infections. In research published in the journal Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the physicians report that patients face an increased risk of infection from exposure to a contaminated scope if they had a stent placed in the bile duct using a tainted scope, had a history of bile duct cancer, or were hospital inpatients at the time of the procedure. The study was based on data from a 2015 bacterial outbreak at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center that sickened eight patients, three of whom later died. Among its authors were physicians who were directly involved in reporting the outbreak, tracking down its source and halting it. UCLA’s actions helped educate the public about risks posed by contaminated scopes, whose complicated design makes them difficult to clean and implicates them in several outbreaks. “Our interest is in protecting public health,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Stephen Kim, a clinical instructor in the division of digestive disease in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “We feel a professional and academic responsibility to learn from our experience and add our findings to the limited body of research on this topic.” The senior author was Dr. Raman Muthusamy, a UCLA clinic...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news