Inpatient Risk For C. Difficile May Rise If Prior Bed Occupant Received Antibiotics, Study Finds.

“If the previous occupant of a hospital bed received antibiotics, the next patient who uses that bed may be at higher risk for a severe form” of Clostridium difficile, researchers concluded after studying “more than 100,000 pairs of patients who sequentially occupied a given hospital bed in four institutions between 2010 and 2015.” Excluded from the study were patients who had had “recent C. diff infection or whose prior bed occupant was in the bed for less than 24 hours.”“It’s not easy to sterilize the room/bed between patients because C. diff spores are extremely hardy. To be killed, they need to be soaked in a bleach-containing cleaning agent for an adequate amount of time.” http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-infections-hospital-beds-idUSKCN12A1VY