By Healthcare Facilities Today

Standard teaching is that hospital-acquired C. difficile infections (CDI) are an infection control problem, but it may be more closely related to antibiotic control, according to an article posted on Medscape.com.

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), showed that 75 percent of the patients were already colonized with C. difficile at the time of admission.

According to the Medscape article, the implication is that to prevent CDI, clinicians need to find ways to identify patients who are already colonized to protect them from obvious risks, and also to consider them to be potential sources of infection to others. This could substantially change infection control practice for prevention of CDI.

Read the article. Note: Registration (free) on Medscape may be required.