Even NFL Stars LOVE Contact Precautions

What do we love most of all on this blog? Yup - contact precautions. Humor!

Well, I do have respect for the utility of gloves in preventing HAIs and MDRO transmission- but I've never been sure of gowns. It's just that they are pretty annoying to don and doff and little evidence supports any additional benefit above wearing just gloves. I mean, if Rob Gronkowski from the almost champion New England Patriots can't even put on a gown correctly, what chance do we mere mortals have, seriously. Maybe that's the reason why the benefits of gowns and gloves for preventing MRSA and VRE are so hard to estimate?

There are many other reasons why the benefits of contact precautions for endemic MDRO are so hard to quantify, of course. In this week's JAMA, Mike Rubin, Matt Samore and Anthony Harris have written a very nice Viewpoint acknowledging the limitations in the current literature.  In addition, they point out why studying infection prevention interventions is so tricky and suggest a path forward. They should be commended for their thoughtfulness and honesty - something those of us (including me) who support other policies with even weaker evidence bases should remember. If Gronk is having trouble with contact precautions, it's OK if some of the rest of us do too.

Lovin' Contact Precautions (this time in nursing homes)

Contact precautions get very little love on our humble blog. So little in fact, that I've taken it upon myself to be the resident contact precautions fanboy. Just today on rounds, I was waxing sentimental about the poor yellow gowns that protect us from horrible pathogens and how we unceremoniously toss them into the trash after wearing them - we never even say goodbye...but I digress

There is a new study in the September ICHE by Mary-Claire Roghmann and colleagues from the University of Maryland and University of Michigan that sought to estimate the transmission of MRSA from nursing home residents to healthcare workers' gowns and gloves based on clinical activity and resident characteristics (i.e. skin integrity or stool incontinence).  They aimed to determine if there were certain situations where wearing gowns/gloves would be most protective of HCW contamination (and thus reduce MRSA transmission).  The logic - if gowns and gloves are contaminated, the underlying hands would be contaminated if gloves/gowns weren't worn and since no one has ever gotten hand hygiene compliance near 90-100% anywhere, including nursing homes, then gowns/gloves result in cleaner hands and less MRSA transmission. I know, much more complicated than a cluster-RCT, but important data...but I digress again...

RESULTS! Overall, they enrolled 401 nursing home residents from 13 facilities including 113 (28%) who were MRSA colonized. 62% were nasally colonized, 9% were colonized at the perianal skin and 28% were colonized at both sites. There were 954 HCW interactions (median 7 per patient) with MRSA+ patients with a median duration of 6 minutes. Overall, gowns were contaminated after 14% of the interactions and gloves were contaminated 24% of the time. Gown/Glove isolates were identical (Spa type) to patient isolates 89% of the time. Overall, the contamination rate ranged from zero to 24% for gowns and 8 to 37% for gloves based on activity. So as far as hand contamination goes, there were no safe interactions and thus, we wouldn't expect activity-based precautions to be effective. (See figure below)  Significant predictors of glove/gown contamination included dressing, transferring, patient hygiene, changing linens and changing diapers.

As far as patient characteristics, stool incontinence did not modify gown/glove contamination with MRSA, but skin breakdown was associated with higher contamination when healthcare workers transferred the patient, changed their diapers and helped dress the patient.

My interpretation of the study is that if we want to limit the substantial transmission of MRSA in nursing homes, we better up our game. And that game should probably include gloves and perhaps gowns for most of the analyzed patient care activities. Unless we can get hand hygiene compliance up to 100%, we better just learn to love the glove.

Love The Glove

It's pretty easy to hate on gloves. They're certainly annoying to put on and wear. Yet, much of what we do in medicine is difficult yet worth it, if what we do is effective. Now if we really could get hand hygiene compliance beyond 90%, I think a narrow focus on hand rub utilization would be OK. But, irrespective of what facilities are reporting, when you really look, their compliance is closer to 50% (if they're lucky). That's why I continue to (a) encourage investment in hand hygiene research and (b) recommend glove use in our infection control bundles.

In a recent JAMA Pediatrics, David Kauffman and colleagues reported the results of a single-center RCT comparing mandatory glove use before all patient and IV catheter contacts vs hand hygiene alone. The study took place in the NICU during 2008-2011 and was funded by University of Virginia and Cardinal Health Foundation. The 120 enrolled infants (60 in each arm) needed to weigh less than 1000 g and/or have a gestational age less than 29 weeks and age less than 8 days old. The primary outcomes were infection in the bloodstream, urinary tract, or cerebrospinal fluid or necrotizing enterocolitis.  Randomization was fairly effective; however, the glove use arm neonates were more likely to have a central line, require mechanical ventilation and receive TPN.

Their were several significant difference between the outcomes in the two groups. Neonates in the glove-use arm had lower rates of late-onset invasive infection or necrotizing enterocolitis (32% vs 45%, p=0.13), fewer Gram-positive BSIs (15% vs 32%, p=0.03) and fewer CLABSI (3.4 vs 9.4/1000 catheter days, p=0.01).  Frankly, with such a small study, I'm surprised they found any significant differences. What would I recommend after reading this study? I would recommend (a) NIH/AHRQ/PCORI fund a follow-up multicenter study to validate these findings and (b) in the meantime, wear gloves when caring for pediatric patients based on this study and our earlier study in Pediatrics.

Is hand hygiene prior to nonsterile gloving really necessary?

There's a new study in American Journal of Infection Control that I think is really important. The University of Maryland group performed a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact of hand hygiene prior to donning nonsterile gloves. The study involved 230 healthcare workers in 7 ICUs who were randomized to either perform hand hygiene with an alcohol-based handrub or perform no hand hygiene, prior to donning nonsterile gloves for contact precautions. Hands were cultured prior to randomization and after donning of gloves.

The key findings were as follows:

• There was no difference in baseline hand contamination between the 2 groups
• There was no difference in contamination of the gloved hand between the 2 groups
• A pathogen was detected on only 3 hands (1 MRSA in the hand hygiene group, and 2 MSSA in the no hand hygiene group)
• Importantly, hand hygiene prior to gloving added 31.5 secs to the gloving process. For the average ICU nurse caring for a patient in contact precautions, this adds up to 19 extra minutes per 12-hour shift.

Bottom line:  this study suggests that hand hygiene prior to gloving is a nonvalue-added activity.

Photo:  The Sound of Science

A good time to ditch contact precautions?

I get that no one likes to don gowns and gloves before seeing patients, particularly ID consultants who see a large number of patients colonized/infected with MDROs. I understand that touching is important for healing and that somehow wearing gloves impedes the healing touch. I even see why some still think that contact precautions place patients at greater risk for medical errors, even if the data supporting that contention is lacking. What I don't get is why infection prevention folks are pillorying one of the most effective methods we have in MDRO transmission prevention right when we need it the most.

My thoughts:
1) MDRO rates, particularly for Gram-negative pathogens like CRE and Acinetobacter are increasing
2) We have no antibiotics in our quiver, so prevention is our only hope for a decade+
3) Most prior room occupant studies are flawed and when proper methods are used, prior room occupants are not a risk factor - thus the environment isn't the only answer.
4) Hand hygiene compliance is only 60% - I know some are claiming 90%+ on their reports, but it's simply not true.
5) Gloves are massively effective in reducing the burden of organisms on hands and CP have now been shown to be effective in an RCT - (if you can look past the JAMA trial nihilists)

Which brings me to the table below modified from a study we completed a few years ago. You'll notice the red circle highlighting the per room entry contamination rate of healthcare workers hands with A. baumannii when hand hygiene compliance is 60%. The green circle highlights the contamination rate when gloves are worn with the 90% compliance achieved in the BUGG study (even ignoring that universal CP is associated with higher HH compliance).  You can see that when a healthcare worker enters an A. baumannii+ patient's room, 15% of the time they will leave the room with A. baumannii on their hands. If the hospital practices universal CP, it will be 3% of the time.

So, I get why people hate contact precautions, particularly ID-trained hospital epidemiologists. I just don't get the delight with which they limit their use given that CP are supported by the strongest evidence that our dismal science can muster. I suspect, again, that I won't have to live that long to witness their regret.

Touch your patient.

Here's an interesting and thoughtful piece on gloving by Dr. Karen Sibert, an anesthesiologist. I agree with her perspective.

Give Gloves a Chance: Benefits of Mandatory Gloving Policy in Pediatrics

We spend a lot of time discussing the importance of clean hands in preventing hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Most of the time we equate clean hands with hand-hygiene compliance and complicated and fleeting surveillance and educational programs. It would be one thing if these efforts led to compliance levels above 90%, but even the Joint Commission could barely get compliance above 80% after massive efforts.

Which leads me to one question - are we asking the wrong question?

Instead of focusing solely on driving hand hygiene compliance above 90%, perhaps we should focus on clean hands. If we ask a new question: "What do we need to do at our hospital to get healthcare worker hands to be 90% clean?", we get very different answers than if we focus solely on increasing hand rub use. For example, we could begin studying long-acting hand disinfection products that work all day or environmental cleaning products that keep hands clean in the first place. And another thing we could consider looking at is the benefits of the humble examination glove. We just published a study in Pediatrics, led by Jun Yin a PhD student in statistics, that aimed to do just that.

At the University of Iowa, we have a policy that mandates that healthcare workers wear gloves for all patient contacts during RSV season. We wanted to see if we could take advantage of this natural experiment to see what happened to HAI infection rates during the mandatory gloving periods compared to non-gloving periods.  To do that we completed a quasi-experimental study using time series analysis (Poisson regression models) on data from 2002-2010. We studied the effect in 5 units including a 20-bed PICU, a 62-bed NICU, a 5-bed Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, a 26-bed Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Special Care Unit, and a 35-bed Pediatric Medical/Surgical Mixed Acuity Unit.

What did we find? Universal gloving periods were associated with a 25% reduction in HAI rates after adjusting for long term trends and seasonal effects. There was a 37% reduction in bloodstream infections (BSIs), a 39% reductions in central line-association BSIs and an 80% reduction in hospital-acquired pneumonias. The reductions were statistically significant in the PICU, NICU and Bone-Marrow Transplant Unit.

Yes, this unfunded study has limitations. It's a non-randomized, single center study. There could have been other factors that started just when RSV season started every year along with the gloving policy (although we couldn't think of any). Since this intervention was turned on and off every year for 9 years (with an exemption in 2009 for the novel H1N1 pandemic), it's unlikely there were other interventions that biased these results every year at the exact same time. 

Perhaps we need further study and cluster-randomized trails. We won't have to wait long. There is an important AHRQ-funded study that Anthony Harris's group is just completing at the University of Maryland that looks at the benefits of mandatory glove+gown policies in ICUs. However, this study won't tell us if it's the gowns or gloves or if they work in Pediatrics. So what do we do in the interim while waiting for future trials and magical interventions that get hand hygiene compliance above 90%?  All we are saying is "Give Gloves a Chance."

Reference: Yin J et al. Pediatrics April 22, 2013

Image: wikipedia

Media coverage: Reuters Health and Wired (Superbug)

Benefits of Universal Gloving

Last but not least in the May issue of ICHE, Gonzalo Bearman and our very own Mike Edmond from VCU in Richmond, completed a nice quasi-experimental study looking at the benefits of universal gloving for all patient contact vs. standard contact precautions in their 18-bed surgical ICU. In phase 1 from September '07 to March '08, only standard contact precautions based on passive (clinical culture-directed) surveillance were used while in phase 2 from March '08 to Sept '08 universal gloving with emollient-impregnated gloves was used without contact precautions. During both phases, admission and every 4 day surveillance cultures were performed for MRSA and VRE but for study purposes only and not shared with the clinical teams.

So what happened? Only good things. Universal gloving compliance was 78% in phase 2 and was associated with higher hand hygiene compliance on entry (5% higher) and exit (12% higher). It also appears that universal gloving was associated with reduced CLABSI and catheter-UTIs, but with p-values = 0.1 for both outcomes. C. difficile was also lower (2.0/1,000 patient-days down to 1.4/1,000) but this finding was not statistically significant, p=0.53. VAP rates were the same (1.0 vs 1.1/1000 device days) The most important finding, in my opinion, was that HCW were less likely to have MRSA and VRE contaminating their hands during the universal glove phase. Despite what the authors state (Mike don't be mad!), the study was not likely powered sufficiently to find reduced acquisition, given that MRSA acquisition was reduced by 50% with universal glove (2.9/1000 patient-days vs. 1.4/1000 patient days) but this had a p=0.2.

I think overall, that these findings suggest that universal gloving shows promise warranting further study. I wonder if they stopped universal gloving after the study period? If they did, this would make for a very epidemiologically sound quasi-study (roll-in and roll-out) which could be analyzed using more powerful segmented Poisson regression,which can detect a change in slope and intercept associated with starting or stopping the intervention.

The June ICHE just appeared online 5 minutes ago...more exciting evidence for us to review!

Note to surgeons: Double glove!

A study in this month's Archives of Surgery from Andreas Widmer's group at the University of Basel evaluated the risk of intraoperative glove perforation on the development of surgical site infection. The investigators found that perforation of gloves occurred in 16% of more than 4,000 procedures studied. For those procedures in which antimicrobial prophylaxis was not used, the adjusted odds ratio for development of surgical site infection following glove perforation was 4.2 (CI95 1.7-10.8, p 0.003). For cases in which antimicrobial prophylaxis was used, there was no difference in infection rates between cases where glove perforations occurred vs. those where no perforation occurred. The implication of this study is that double gloving should become a standard practice. In 2007, the American College of Surgeons recommended that double gloving should be performed to protect the surgeon from coming into contact with the patient's blood and body fluids. Now we know that double gloving will also protect the patient.