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New Interest In Anti-germ Coatings In Hospitals
WASHINGTON (AP) - Some intensive-care units in the U.S. are about to get copper
fittings as part of a project to see if drug-resistant bacteria survive better
on hospitals’ ubiquitous stainless steel than on copper.
About 1.7 million Americans a year develop infections while hospitalized
and almost 100,000 of them die, according to the Centers for Disease Control
and
Prevention. Scientists have long preached better hygiene to control hospital
spread of germs, but increasingly medical manufacturers are looking to anti-germ
coatings to help.
In November, the Food and Drug Administration approved sale of the first
breathing tube coated with silver, a metal long known to somewhat repel bacteria.
Ventilator patients are at high risk of getting pneumonia. In a multi-hospital
study, 7.5 percent of patients given a regular breathing tube developed pneumonia,
compared to 4.8 percent of those given C.R. Bard Inc.’s new Argento ventilation
tube, the FDA found.
Also, Baxter HealthCare Corp. announced FDA clearance of a silver-coated
IV catheter connector, designed to help prevent bacteria from clustering at
this
entry point
to the bloodstream.
But a coppery hue in hospitals?
In a British study published last year, drug-resistant staph germs survived
for three days on stainless steel plates kept at room temperature, but the
researchers
found no signs of the germs on pure copper after 90 minutes.
The new study, funded by a government grant to the Copper Development Association,
is putting that finding to a real-world test involving three drug-resistant
bugs - staph, enterococci and acinetobacter.
First, researchers are swabbing down a handful of ICU rooms at New York’s
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Medical University of South Carolina
and a Veterans Affairs medical center. They must learn where the germs lurk,
explains Sloan-Kettering lead researcher Dr. Kent Sepkowitz.
Then the hospitals will substitute copper for some germ-prone surfaces in
those rooms, and track if the change makes a difference.
Copper is expensive, but so are hospital-caused infections, Sepkowitz says.
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