CDC: Medical devices key source of antibiotic-resistant infections

A new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that antibiotic resistance is more prevalent in bacterial infections linked to medical devices such as catheters and ventilators than in the bacteria associated with surgical infections.

Data from more than 5,600 hospitals in the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) also show that healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) acquired in long-term acute care facilities are more likely to be antibiotic resistant than those in short-stay acute care hospitals, while data from a separate report indicate that antibiotic resistance is more prevalent in adult HAIs than it is in pediatric hospital infections.

The lead author on the two reports, which appeared yesterday in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, says the findings should be a wake-up call for hospitals and public health officials.

“These data show that the threat of exposure to bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics extends across the nation,” CDC epidemiologist Lindsey Weiner-Lastinger, MPH, said in a press release from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the publisher of the journal. “The data also serve as an urgent call for healthcare facilities and public health agencies to intensify their efforts to prevent the emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance.”