Frequent Cleaning Has Little Effect on Pathogen Found in Hospital Patient Rooms

Frequent cleaning and disinfection are often touted as a solution for eliminating antibiotic-resistant pathogens that cause health care-acquired infections. (HAI). However, a recent study found cleaning my not be enough to deter some of these germs.

Candida auris (C. auris), a multi-drug resistant pathogen commonly transmitted in health care facilities, re-contaminates hospital rooms within four hours of cleaning, according to a study funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) foundation and presented at the recent Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) Spring Conference, Infection Control Today reports.

Environmental services (EVS) staff completed daily patient room cleaning and disinfection, which included wiping down high-touch surfaces with hydrogen peroxide wipes, at an acute-care hospital and skilled nursing facility in Chicago and five skilled nursing facilities in Orange County, California. Four hours later, researchers took samples from high-touch surfaces in the cleaned rooms, then repeated these samples after eight and 12 hours.

The samples revealed surfaces close to the patient were commonly re-contaminated with C. auris only four hours after cleaning, including the overbed table (24%), bed handrail (24%), and remote/call button (19%). However, samples taken outside of patient rooms, such as at the nursing station and on equipment carts, rarely detected C. auris.

Dr. Sarah Sansom, study author and attending physician of infectious diseases at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, said she and her colleagues were surprised at how rapidly surfaces became contaminated with C. auris following cleaning.

“More frequent cleaning is unlikely to provide adequate control of C auris environmental contamination because contamination occurs within hours after disinfection,” Sansom said. “Rapid re-contamination of environmental surfaces after manual cleaning/disinfection suggests that alternate mitigation strategies should be evaluated.”