Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Proven Merit

"This changes the game. The room is effectively germ free. Now I can say to a patient -- after 30 years of being in the infectious-disease business -- 'Welcome to your room, this room is safe, it's really safe."
Dr. Dick Zoutman, Queen's University infectious-disease specialist, co-inventor of the AsepticSure technology

"It's an extremely important problem. There is no question that so-called superbugs, antibiotic-resistant organisms, are increasing around the world, despite our best efforts. There is no question that so-called superbugs, antibiotic-resistant organisms, are increasing around the world, despite our best efforts."
Dr. Andrew Simor, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto

"We were able to come out of the outbreak in a record short time. [Eliminating the bacteria in two days, opposed to a typical weeks-long process.] The cost to the hospital is [usually] absolutely tremendous when you're in an outbreak, because you've got extra security, you've got extra cleaning, you've got extra equipment being used."
Dr. Michael De La Roche, chief of infection control, Quinte Health Care
Afrazier blogspot.com

The new apparatus that Dr. Zoutman invented along with Dr. Michael Shannon, is a system proving to be a winner in the universal battle by hospitals against the perplexing incursion and dangerous contamination of super-bugs. The device is placed in the centre of a room, the door then closed and sealed with adhesive sheets, the fogger turned on from the exterior by remote control.

A Belleville hospital, under the aegis of Quinte  Health Care, used the device that pumps contaminated rooms full of antiseptic vapour, killing every bacteria it comes in contact with. Since the successful decontamination on an infected ward the floor has been free for an unheard-of six-month period of episodes of patients being infected by Methocillin-resistant Staphylococus A (MRSA), a bacteria linked to the deaths of 2,200 patients in Canada on an annual basis.

The process has been named "terminal clean". The concept itself is not new, there are other cleaning tools similar to AsepticSure dispersing various chemical mists to kill bugs with special ultraviolent light; there are antimicrobial building materials and even the use of cleaning robots. Typically hospitals task cleaning staff to scour rooms to destroy germs, but tight budgets and inadequate staff training along with heavy workloads can mean "the cleaning may not be ideal", commented Dr. Michael Gardam the University Health Network in Toronto.

The terminal clean process decontaminates a room with a 99.9% bacterial-clean success rate. Curtains are washed along with any other movable objects and floors are scrubbed as well as walls, yet there are such countless bacteria present, enough manage to re-surface to spread again. Systems similar to the new AspeticSure disperse hydrogen peroxide (HP), but the new innovation replaced the aerosol with ozone and some hydrogen peroxide, a combination that efficiently kills microbes to 100% eradication.

After the prototype use of AsepticSure at the Belleville Hospital by Dr. Zoutman where he is chief of staff, over 100 swabs were taken in the ward and there was no trace of the superbug left behind. Six months later, not one patient has tested positive for MRSA, a world first according to Medizone International which has a stake in the outcome and how hospitals receive this new cleaning protocol.

Califnornia-based Medizone International has agreed to market AsepticSure.

One of Canada's largest hospital networks, Toronto's UHN, has not yet been persuaded that the use of AsepticSure is worth the $100,000 each system costs. They seem more in favour of other "no-touch" systems using HP vapour or ultravioletlight, undecided whether they too may be worth the $20,000 to $50,000 cost per unit. Sunnybrook awaits more testing of such testings in hospital environments before committing to the substantial investment

Labels: , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

 
()() Follow @rheytah Tweet