Becker's Hospital Review

9 INFECTION CONTROL & PATIENT SAFETY Dog detects C. diff bacteria at North Carolina hospital By Gabrielle Masson A beagle helps detect dangerous bacteria at Greenville, N.C.-based Vidant Medical Center, according to NBC affiliate WITN. Harley the dog was trained to work with people and sniff out Clostridium difficile. She sniffs around the hospital rooms twice a week. When she finds C. diffi- cile she sits down, alerting staff of the bacteria. "Every hospital has C. difficile cases, but our rates are about half of what the national average is," Paul Cook, MD, a professor of medicine and chief of the division of infectious diseases at Greenville-based East Caro- lina University, told WITN. "Is part of that because of Harley? I don't know, but I'd like to think so." Harley was trained for eight months and is able to distinguish the bacteria out of 1,000 or more other scents. While there was another beagle in the Nether- lands that could detect C. difficile, Harley is one of the only known beagles in the U.S. who has this skill. n How this high school class is working to prevent sepsis By Mackenzie Bean A high school science teacher in Florida is on a mission to improve sepsis care — with the help of her 22 students, reported The Palm Beach Post. Mary Fish is a biotechnology teacher at Boca Ra- ton-based Spanish River High School whose father died from sepsis four years ago. She and her students are de- veloping a prototype of a wearable biosensor that could be used to detect sepsis in intensive care patients. "Through this prototype we could potentially monitor when a patient may be predisposed to sepsis and eventually stop it before it evolves into a larger issue," Ms. Fish told The Palm Beach Post. Ms. Fish and her class are one of 14 teams nationwide that won a $10,000 Lemelson InvenTeam Grant from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The grant will support their continued work on the pro- totype during the 2019-20 school year. In June, the class plans to present the prototype at MIT's EurekaFest. n Sepsis deaths down 30% globally from 1990 to 2017 By Anuja Vaidya S epsis deaths worldwide have dropped by 30 per- cent since 1990, according to a study published in The Lancet. For the study, researchers used data from the Global Bur- den of Disease Study, examining annual sepsis incidence and death trends from 1990 through 2017. The study shows a drop in both sepsis incidence and deaths. Sepsis incidence declined by 19 percent, from about 60.2 million cases in 1990 to 48.9 million cases in 2017. Deaths decreased by 30 percent, from 15.7 million in 1990 to 11 million in 2017, representing 19.7 percent of all global deaths. Researchers also found that in 2017, the majority of sepsis cases (85 percent) occurred in low- or middle-income countries and that more than 40 percent of all cases oc- curred in children younger than 5. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Seat- tle-based University of Washington schools of medicine conducted the study. n Kentucky hospital cuts C. diff infections by 59% By Mackenzie Bean R ussell, Ky.-based Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital saw a significant reduction in hospital-onset Clos- tridium difficile infections after implementing two key interventions, according to a study published in the Journal of Health Economics and Outcomes Research. The hospital, part of Cincinnati-based Bon Secours Mercy Health, implemented the use of launderable hospital bed barriers and an evidence-based antibiotic stewardship program in April 2016. Researchers from Xavier University in Cincinnati ana- lyzed the hospital's infection rates from September 2014 through September 2018, spanning before and after the intervention period. They found monthly C. difficile infections fell from 1.79 before the intervention to 1.03 after. In total, the inter- ventions were associated with a 59 percent decrease in hospital-onset C. difficile infections and a 37 percent drop in antibiotic use over the study period. n

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