Outbreak of Burkholderia cepacia bacteraemia in a tertiary care centre due to contaminated ultrasound probe gel.

Link to article at PubMed

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Outbreak of Burkholderia cepacia bacteraemia in a tertiary care centre due to contaminated ultrasound probe gel.

J Hosp Infect. 2017 Sep 15;:

Authors: Abdelfattah R, Aljumaah S, Alqahtani A, Althawadi S, Barron I, Almofada S

Abstract
BACKGROUND: Burkholderia cepacia is a significant opportunistic organism in hospitalized and immunocompromised patients, particularly in cystic fibrosis [1] AIMS: We describe the epidemiological investigation of an outbreak of B. cepacia bacteraemia.
METHODS: The study examined 14 patients during their admission to three ICUs (Intensive Care Units) in a tertiary care hospital between January-June 2016. The outbreak involved 9 (57%) female and 6 (43%) male patients. All patients were adults of ages ranging from 19-85 years with a median age of 52 years. Patients' medical charts, laboratory cultures, exposures, and central line insertion procedures were reviewed.
FINDINGS: B. cepacia was isolated from the blood cultures of 14 patients resulting from contamination of the gel applied to the ultrasound probe used to guide the insertion of a central venous catheter. Molecular pathogen typing using pulsed field gel electrophoresis showed 95% similarity between the B. cepacia isolates from the blood of these patients and those isolated from the ultrasound gel.
CONCLUSIONS: Ongoing surveillance and prompt investigation of unusual disease outbreaks are vital for identifying sources of contamination of B. cepacia and protecting at-risk patients. Sound epidemiological methods are very important for identifying the source of any hospital infection outbreak.

PMID: 28923373 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

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