An alarming new study has found that people are getting sick due to dirty hospital rooms caused by bad cleaning guidelines -- meaning you could die from a disease you didn't come into the hospital with.
We recently reported on an alarming study that found that hospital rooms are loaded with germs that could cause infection and even death in patients due to poor hospital cleaning practices, but just what kind of diseases could you actually get?
The study, which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that research was lacking into the best ways to disinfect and sanitize the hard surfaces in hospitals — a surprising reality considering that it can put patients at risk of infection and serious illness or death. The researchers found there weren’t enough studies to guide proper action.
About one out of every 25 hospital patients gets an infection from the hospital, an alarming percentage for such a supposedly clean environment. Out of 721,000 who got an infection, about 75,000 people died.
One of the diseases is called Carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which is a gram-negative bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics, and it is thus often called a “superbug” that can kill up to half of patients who get it in their bloodstream. Hospitals are considered the primary transition sites for CRE infections, and up to 75 percent of people who were admitted to the hospital with it came from a long-term care facility or from another hospital.
There’s also Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bacteria that causes very difficult to treat infections in humans, and it can also be resistant to antibiotics. The disease is especially problematic in hospitals, as well as prisons and nursing homes, due to the fact that patients in hospitals often have open wounds and weakened immune systems.
Another worrisome disease often found in a hospital environment is known as Clostridium difficile colitis, often referred to as “C. difficile” or “C. diff.” It is an inflammation of the large intestine caused by a spore-forming bacterium that can cause diarrhea that is infections, as well as flu-like symptoms, bloating, and abdominal pain that can get very severe. About 29,000 people died in the United States in 2011 at health care facilities.
