Handy find: 1 in 10 patients carry superbugs at admission
Patients need to wash their hands too, not just doctors, to stop superbug spread
15th April 2019
Patients’ hands need a good scrub while in hospital, according to a US study that found they are commonly contaminated with multi-drug-resistant organisms (MDRO) at admission or early on in their stay.
Writing in Clinical Infectious Diseases, University of Michigan researchers called for a greater focus on patient hand hygiene after finding 10% of the nearly 400 patients (mean age 61) in their study of two hospitals had an MDRO on their hands at admission.
After taking 710 hand cultures and more than 4200 room cultures starting within 24