Rosie reincarnated

As a child I never liked cartoons much, with one exception--The Jetsons. The Jetsons were a family that lived in Orbit City in 2062. The parents were George and Jane, and the kids were Judy and Elroy. But there was also the family dog, Astro, and their cleaning lady, Rosie the Robot.

I couldn't help but think of Rosie as I read an article on the use of disinfecting robots at Johns Hopkins Hospital in today's Baltimore Sun. These robots seem to be all the rage. If you want to dig a little deeper, Clinical Infectious Diseases has the full account of the study done by Trish Perl's group. In the study, rooms that had previous occupants with MDROs were subjected to standard cleaning in 3 hospital units. In 3 other units, rooms were disinfected by hydrogen peroxide vapor producing robots. Subsequent room occupants were assessed for MDROs to determine whether transmission to the new occupant had occurred. The investigators demonstrated a significant reduction for VRE in subsequent occupants, but no significant decrease for MRSA, C. difficile, or MDR-gram negative rods. Of note, the study was partially funded via in-kind services by the robot maker. An excellent editorial by Cliff McDonald and Matt Arduino accompanies the paper.

The bottom line is that the authors demonstrated an absolute 6% reduction in VRE acquisition with use of robotic disinfection. Does that result warrant jumping on the robot band wagon? I don't think so for several reasons. First, with the exception of a few special patient populations (e.g., oncology and transplant patients), VRE has little pathogenic potential. Second, only a fraction of newly colonized VRE patients will develop infection. Third, a big problem with the study is that molecular typing was not performed. A few years ago, one of my IPs noted that 4 consecutive patients housed in the same room in our medical ICU all developed VRE bloodstream infections. I was certain that we had a problem with suboptimal cleaning between patients. Fortunately, we had all the isolates, and when molecular testing was performed we surprisingly found that the isolates were all genetically very distinct. It seems that VRE is an organism that while transmissible is also one for which antibiotic pressure is always creating new strains in individual patients. Lastly, even if this technology were perfect and rendered a room absolutely sterile, within seconds of the robot leaving and the humans returning, the room will once again be contaminated. It reminds me of the hysterical response by grade schools several years ago of shutting down a school and bleaching it after a child was found to have MRSA.

So to any hospital thinking about hiring Rosie, ponder long and hard, and consider taking all that money and using it to drive hand hygiene compliance to a new level. Remember, in health care, the hands remain the final common pathway.

Happy New Year!

The new ICHE is here, the new ICHE is here!!!

Congrats to all of the authors who had articles published in this August's ICHE. Now that ICHE has a massive new impact score, I suspect most of them now feel like Navin when he says, "Page 73 - Johnson, Navin R.!  - I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now."  Well, I hope all the things that happen to these fine authors are a little more positive.

Highlights:

Page 737, Boyce, John M et al. looked at the impact of an automated mobile UV-C light unit on environmental contamination in 25 rooms after patient discharge. They report the unit significantly reduced aerobic colony counts and C. difficile spores.

Page 743, Rutala, William A et al. wrote an accompanying editorial that concluded that "there is now ample evidence that no-touch systems such as UV-C light or hydrogen peroxide can reduce environmental contamination...(however) only a single study using a before-after design has been published that demonstrated that such a system can reduce healthcare-associated infections." There we go again, hospital infection prevention: the queen (or king) of intermediate outcomes. Would be pretty cool if there were more independent (federal or foundation) resources to study HAI prevention interventions, such as these.

Page 791, Gupta, Kalpana et al. report the results of a cohort of all patients at the VA Boston Health Care System that had clean or clean-contaminated in 2008-2009 and a nasal MRSA PCR test less than 31 days prior to surgery. 6.6% of the patients were MRSA+ and were at significantly higher risk for postoperative MRSA infections (RR, 8.46; 95% CI, 1.70–42.04). Interestingly, vancomycin prophylaxis was associated with higher SSI risk in those negative for nasal MRSA (RR, 4.34; 95% CI, 2.19–8.57) but not in MRSA+ patients.

Page 818, Tohme, Rania A et al. reviewed hepatitis B vaccination rates and immunity among healthcare students during a 10-year period at Emory University. They report that among 4,075 students, only 60% had documented vaccination and 84% had anti-HBs concentration greater than or equal to 10 mIU/mL. It is interesting that despite CDC and ACIP (1995) recommendations of routine vaccination of children aged 11-12 years, and for all less than 18yo in 1999, the majority of students were only recently vaccinated.

If I left you off this list, sorry! You are still awesome!