Multidrug-resistant germs in the Klinikum Bremen-Mitte

Multidrug-resistant bacteria at Klinikum Bremen-Mitte

05/17/2012

Once again, multidrug-resistant pathogens were detected in a baby in the Bremen-Mitte hospital. Antibiotic-resistant germs were found on the skin of the ten-week-old infant, but the child has not yet been ill with a corresponding infection, Karen Matiszick, spokeswoman for the Health Network North, reported on Thursday.

The proven pathogens probably belong to the same strain, as the multidrug-resistant germs at the end of 2011, three babies had died on the premature care center in the Bremen-Mitte Hospital. According to the spokeswoman for the clinic network, a quick test has revealed certain similarities in resistance, but only a genetic analysis can finally provide clarity. According to Matiszick, the results of the investigation of a Bochum laboratory are expected next week.

Ten-week-old boy infected with multidrug-resistant pathogens
The ten-week-old boy, on whose skin the pathogens were discovered, saw the light of day in the Klinikum Links of the Weser at the end of February and was admitted at the beginning of the month because of a hernia in the Department of Pediatric Surgery of the Bremen-Mitte Hospital. Investigations on possible bacterial load were neither in the Klinikum Links of the Weser, nor the recording swab in the center of Bremen-Mitte multidrug-resistant pathogens are detected, so that it can be assumed that the boy was only in the center of Bremen-Mitte with the multi-resistant intestinal germs in contact. For the boy, however, there is no acute danger because he does not have the germs, explained the spokeswoman of the hospital network.

Multiresistant germs at Klinikum Bremen-Mitte have long been a problem
The situation was different in the premature babies who had become infected at the end of 2011 with multidrug-resistant pathogens at Klinikum Bremen-Mitte. Some of them fell ill and three of them did not survive the infection. To date, two infected children of the first outbreak wave are isolated at the Children's Hospital in Bremen-Mitte. Several departments of the hospital were closed after the discovery of multidrug-resistant pathogens and thoroughly disinfected. Apparently without the desired success. Because shortly after reopening in January, the same multidrug-resistant pathogens were again detected at the preemie station. Since then, the premature babies and obstetrics are closed, but apparently the hygiene problem is not limited to these stations, as the finding of multidrug-resistant pathogens in the ten-week-old boy in pediatric surgery shows. Especially according to Karen Matiszick „the probability exists that it is the same pathogen strain.“

New evidence of the source of infection?
The way in which the boy could have been infected is completely unclear, as was the case with the sick premature babies last year. However, the experts hope for the current infection „a new trace of where the germination source sits“, explained Matiszick. Thus, some infection routes that were still in question, are now excluded. For example, so far there was also the possibility that the children were infected in the building of the gynecological clinic with the germs, which can now be excluded on the basis of the negative smear examinations at the boy's admission. Whether a transmission of the pathogens of the still isolated stationed two babies of the first wave of infection by the staff has taken place, can not be clearly determined so far, but the spokeswoman of the hospital association considers this extremely unlikely. However, all the ways that the boy has done within the clinic are being reviewed to finally get to the bottom of the source of the multidrug-resistant pathogens. (Fp)

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Picture: Dr. Karl Herrmann