Hydrogen Peroxide Vapor Enhances Hospital Disinfection of Superbugs

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/hydrogen_peroxide_vapor_enhances_hospital_disinfection_of_superbugs

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Hydrogen Peroxide Vapor Enhances Hospital Disinfection of Superbugs[/font]

[font size=4]Johns Hopkins to begin decontaminating isolation rooms with robotic, vapor-dispersing devices[/font]

Release Date: 12/31/2012

[font size=3]Infection control experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital have found that a combination of robot-like devices that disperse a bleaching agent into the air and then detoxify the disinfecting chemical are highly effective at killing and preventing the spread of multiple-drug-resistant bacteria, or so-called hospital superbugs.

A study report on the use of hydrogen peroxide vaporizers -- first deployed in several Singapore hospitals during the 2002 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and later stocked by several U.S. government agencies in case of an anthrax attack - is to be published Jan. 1 in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

In the study, the Johns Hopkins team placed the devices in single hospital rooms after routine cleaning to disperse a thin film of the bleaching hydrogen peroxide across all exposed hospital equipment surfaces, as well as on room floors and walls. Results showed that the enhanced cleaning reduced by 64 percent the number of patients who later became contaminated with any of the most common drug-resistant organisms. Moreover, researchers found that protection from infection was conferred on patients regardless of whether the previous room occupant was infected with drug-resistant bacteria or not.

"Hydrogen peroxide vapor, as spread around patients' rooms by these devices, represents a major technological advance in preventing the spread of dangerous bacteria inside hospitals and, especially, from one patient occupant to the next, even though sick patients were never in the same room at the same time," says infectious disease specialist and study senior investigator Trish Perl, M.D., M.Sc.

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[IDoMath]

1. For now...

[bemildred]

2. H2O2 is great stuff, and very cheap. nt

[xchrom]

3. Interesting. Nt

[DCKit]

4. They tested ozone in several Canadian hospitals a few years back...

and cut the transmission rate of staph and strep to zero with a serious decline in bacterial infection rates.

Unfortunately, ozone is listed as dangerous by the EPA and a few other agencies. Dog forbid they should allow the rooms to be vacant long enough to air out afterward - $$$$ down the drain at >$600 a day.

[Celebration]

5. hospitals need to do a better job

There have been quite a number of things that have been shown to kill mrsa. They just need to actually DO one of them.

http://www.ehow.com/way_5652362_use-disinfect-mrsa.html

http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/12/20/1-800-go-vaporcom-markets-preschools-mrsa-killing-vapor-steam-sanitization-system

(an ad, but whatever-- I have no affiliation with them, would have to look to the research)

Remember the post about using brass instead of steel?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11426422

More traditional product

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/106469.php

various essential oils

http://heritageessentialoils.com/mrsa.php

(another ad, but could look at research)

Now hydrogen peroxide vapor.

It isn't the lack of options that is the problem.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. “Johns Hopkins to begin decontaminating isolation rooms with robotic, vapor-dispersing devices”

(It sounds like they’re actually doing a better job.)

[Celebration]

7. a lot of them ARE

but according to the CDC, more can be done--

Taken together and with other reports such as the March 2011 CDC Vital Signs article, these studies provide evidence that rates of invasive MRSA infections in the United States are falling. While MRSA remains an important public health problem and more remains to be done to further decrease risks of developing these infections, this decrease in healthcare-associated MRSA infections is encouraging.

http://www.cdc.gov/mrsa/statistics/index.html