How hospitals are responding to costly intestinal bacteria

Clostridium difficile, commonly abbreviated as C. diff, infected nearly a half-million people in 2011, with 65 percent of those cases related to a hospital stay. Athena's Peter Barnes looked at several new treatments hospitals are developing either to prevent the infections in the first place or fight them once antibiotics stop working.

Norton Audubon Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, went with a high tech solution. It bought robots, manufactured by Xenex, to disinfect rooms in 12 minutes using ultraviolet light, which the company claimed is 20 times more effective than traditional methods.

Others found success with a more typical approach. The Quebec Heart and Lung Institute screened more than 7,500 patients using a rectal swab and isolated patients with C. diff infections, resulting in healthcare-related C. diff cases dropping by 50 percent.

There are new treatments in the works. Barnes wrote German researchers are testing synthetic molecules to immunize patients, while Baylor University is in the early stages of developing new drugs. But the oldest method may still be the best, as fecal transplants were still shown to be the most effective, curing 90 percent of C. diff infections as an alternative to antibiotics.

For more on how hospitals are working to combat this infection—and steer clear of the costs brought by extended inpatient stays—click on the link below: