Nosocomial Infections

June 2, 2008 -- Hospitals are dangerous places. Here are some of the things you can catch there. You probably wouldn't catch them anywhere else... and the probability there is surprisingly high. Only recently have a very few hospitals begun to report the rates of these infections. Such reporting should be required!

  • Ventilator-associated pneumonia

  • Bloodstream infections caused by catheters

  • Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) -- This bug kills more Americans each year than does HIV. The primary vector? The unwashed hands of healthcare workers.

  • Surgical site infections

  • Clostridium difficile ("C-diff"), a bacterium that causes severe colon infection and stomach pain

And infections are only part of the story. Here are more preventable bad things that happened to hospital patients (in California during the period 7/2007 to 5/2008 as reported by the Los Angeles Times on 6/30/2008):

  • Severe bedsores (466 patients)

  • Foreign objects such as surgical equipment left inside (145 patients)

  • Died under anesthesia (34 patients)

  • Wrong procedure or operated on the wrong body part or patient (41 patients)

This is not to blame the caregivers or the organizations in all cases; it's to point out that the delivery of healthcare is complex and near-impossible to do with total reliability. There are no easy solutions.

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