Doctors’ stethoscopes are ‘loaded’ with bacteria including hospital superbug MRSA, study warns
Doctors’ stethoscopes are dangerously filthy, putting patients in danger of staph and MRSA infections, a new study reveals.
And most are riddled with the kinds of bacteria that cause hospital- associated infections that cause 99,000 deaths a year in the US alone.
Researchers at University of Pennsylvania looked at just a few stethoscopes (40) used by doctors in the intensive care unit (ICU) at the institution’ s medical center.
But every one of the instruments was contaminated with a wide range of bacteria, each carried the notorious germ that causes staph infection and half had MRSA bacteria.
In the span of a single year in the US, an estimated 1.7 million people will contract a hospital- related infection.
For context, at any given moment, about one out of every 25 hospitalised patients has an infection they got where they are being treated.
Though there are many possible infections patients can pick up at hos- pitals, health care facilities are usually teeming with Staphylococcus, pseudomonas, Acinobacter, Clostridium, Enteroococcus, Stenotrophomonas and Burkholderia bacteria.
Each can attack open or healing wounds, surgical sites or simply weakened immune systems of people being treated for other illnesses.
The best preventative measures against the spread of dangerous infections in health care settings are simple but must be comprehensive and constant.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls for doctor’s to thoroughly decontaminate themselves and their instruments between patients.
In short: they need to be clean and hygienic.
Over the past three months, 11 children died and 36 were infected with a virus at a long- term care facility in New Jersey, drawing national attention and horror.
Upon review, poor hand- washing practices were cited as a likely culprit.
It’s these straightforward sanitation habits that may make the difference between life and death, especially for immunocompromised patients like the 11 deceased children.
But in addition to to their hands, doctors must be diligent to sterilize the tools they use consistently.
Namely, their stethoscopes, which physicians tend to carry with them, around their necks or in their pockets.
When one takes a moment to think about it, its unsurprising the instrument might carry risks.
A doctor practicing in an ICU may often see 25 critically ill patients in a single day - with a single stethoscope.
The team of researchers at the University of Pennsylvania analysed the DNA profiles of 40 of those stethoscopes at their own hospital.
Not one instrument was completely clean. They all had abundant staph bacteria and half of them had the most dangerous form common staph, S. aureus.
The scientists also found small amounts of Pseudomonas and Acinetobacter on many of the small sample of stethoscopes.
In an effort to ensure that these bacteria rates could be diminished, the team also tried a cariety of cleaning methods.
The practitioners personal methods, the researchers’ 60 second hydrogen peroxide wipe downs, alcohol or bleach wipes used for any amount of time successfully cut the amount of bacteria on a stethoscope - but failed to eliminate germs altogether.
Only 10 percent of the stethoscopes cleaned by the methods the doctors themselves got as clean as when the researchers used their own standardised cleaning regimens.
And no amount of post-use sterilization could make the instruments as good as new, leaving the researchers to suggest that single-use stethoscopes might help to reduce infection transmission in hospitals.
‘This study underscores the importance of adhering to rigorous infection control procedures, including fully adhering to CDC-recommended decontamination procedures between patients, or using single- patient- use stethoscopes kept in each patient’s room,’ concluded senior study author Dr Ronald Collman.