Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Life

Hospital clean-up actually increased microbial contamination

The clan-up event relates to Edinburgh’s Western General, where a surgical ward was closed in March 2019 following some reports of patients being infected with the Gram-negative bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The spruce of the contamination was traced to water, with the organism being recovered from sink taps and shower heads. Ps. aeruginosa is an important opportunistic pathogen in the healthcare setting.

READ MORE: Mucus helps inactivate bacterial biofilms

Hospital water is a recognized source P. aeruginosa, related more to its ability to colonize biofilms in plumbing fixtures, with the bacterium able to survive in found in low nutrient or oligotrophic environments. Several attempts, through hospital standards and different types of plumbing, have been attempted to try to minimize cases of the bacterium within the healthcare environment.

ALSO READ: How many pathogens are lurking in hospital washing machines?

With the clean-up of the Scottish hospital, documents released by a health governance organization and shown to the BBC indicate that the attempts to clean-up the hospital plumbing system ended up causing further problems.

This was due to the presence of a biofilm community, as the report indicates: “current hypothesis is that remedial plumbing, extensive flushing and water pressure may have dislodged biofilm (a collection of microorganisms such as bacteria) within the water systems leading to the contamination in the recent samples”.

A biofilm is a collection of organic and inorganic, living and dead material collected on a surface. Often attempts to eliminate a biofilm lead to greater numbers of microorganisms released (notwithstanding that biofilms are notoriously difficult to eliminate).

The hospital is to test the water and to assess the situation. Samples of the organism have been identified and since then 18 samples (out of 2,926 taken) have tested positive. The health board describes these as “very low counts of Pseudomonas aeruginosa“.

Avatar photo
Written By

Dr. Tim Sandle is Digital Journal's Editor-at-Large for science news. Tim specializes in science, technology, environmental, business, and health journalism. He is additionally a practising microbiologist; and an author. He is also interested in history, politics and current affairs.

You may also like:

World

Calling for urgent action is the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)

Business

The cathedral is on track to reopen on December 8 - Copyright AFP Ludovic MARINParis’s Notre-Dame Cathedral, ravaged by fire in 2019, is on...

Business

Saudi Aramco President & CEO Amin Nasser speaks during the CERAWeek oil summit in Houston, Texas - Copyright AFP Mark FelixPointing to the still...

Business

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal infers that some workers might be falling out of the job market altogether.