Hospital-acquired multidrug-resistant (MDR) organisms and Clostridium difficile significantly decreased after adding ultraviolet environmental disinfection to the standard cleaning regimen in high-risk areas at the Westchester Medical Center in New York, according to an article on the Healio website.
The decrease in MDR organisms was led by a significant decrease in vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), which was the hospital’s most common MDR organism, according to the report in the American Journal of Infection Control.
“Although there were many other simultaneous infection control interventions occurring at our hospital that could have contributed to the reduction in VRE acquisition, the rates experienced during UV environmental disinfection are the lowest incidence rates of VRE at our institution for the past 10 years and were sustained for 22 months,” the researchers said.
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