Superbugs spread to another hospital in Los Angeles, Calif., as more infections of deadly bacteria are linked to hard-to-clean medical instruments.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Wednesday that four patients were infected with drug-resistant bacteria from a complex medical procedure that uses a small, narrow tube called a duodenoscope. The infections occurred even though the scope was cleaned per the manufacturer’s instructions.
The outbreak comes a few weeks after another hospital, the University of California-Los Angeles Medical Center, announced that seven people were infected with the bacteria and that two died.
The Cedars-Sinai outbreak is remarkably similar to that case. Duodenoscopes are used to “drain fluids from pancreatic and bile ducts blocked by cancerous tumors, gallstones or other conditions,” the hospital said.
However, the devices are extremely hard to clean and contain small parts that can trap debris such as human fluids that can eventually cause infections in other patients, Cedars-Sinai said.
The outbreaks have prompted the Food and Drug Administration to question the disinfection procedures offered by device manufacturers since the scopes were cleaned per their instructions. The maker of scopes linked to both outbreaks was Olympus, which did not immediately return a request for comment.
There have been no reported deaths linked to the Cedars-Sinai outbreak, which stemmed from duodenoscope procedures performed between August 2014 and January 2015.
The hospital is reaching out to 68 patients who had a duodenoscope procedure between those dates to be safe. UCLA also reached out to more than 100 patients to see if they were infected.
