Unhygienic conditions in the hospital Mannheim?

Prosecutor's office investigates hospital Mannheim for suspected hygiene deficiencies

24/10/2014

The allegations are grave: In Mannheim hospital bone remains and dead flies between the surgical instruments have been found. The public prosecutor's office is now investigating the extent to which such hygiene deficiencies have actually occurred in the hospital, which may have caused complications to patients. The manager of the clinic, Alfred Dänzer, has meanwhile resigned.

Hygiene deficiencies in the Mannheim hospital could have caused complications in patients
Contaminated, improperly sterilized and incomplete surgical instruments are devastating to the quality of an operation. Severe complications can be the consequence for the patient. Whether this was the case at the Mannheim Clinic has not yet been conclusively clarified. On Wednesday, the prosecutor seized surgical instruments, records of the sterilization department, letters as well as computerized documents. „Should contaminated surgical instruments have damaged patients, it would be negligent bodily injury, so far we have no clues for this“, the prosecutor's spokesman told the „Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“. Background of the investigation is an anonymous complaint because of the violation of the Medical Devices Act.

Already in October 2013, a doctor of the hospital complained in conversation with „Mirror online“ bad defects on surgical instruments. „Regularly, sieves are incompletely packed or instruments and equipment are not fully functional“, reported the physician. „In my surgery today, four instruments were missing.“ According to information from the magazine staphylococci were discovered in about the same time in two departments of the orthopedic department. The findings were then communicated to the management.

Klink boss resigns after allegations of hygiene deficiencies in the hospital Mannheim
Meanwhile, the clinic's board of directors has convened a commission to ensure that relevant instructions from employees are quickly followed up in the future. In addition, the Commission is responsible for compliance with hygiene standards. Although there are no concrete indications of an accumulation of cases in which it came after the operation to infections or other complications, however, the hospital reduced the number of daily interventions for the time being from 60 to 30. Whether actually dead flies and bone remains between the Surgical instruments were found, as it was said in some media reports, but is still unclear.

Alfred Dänzer, Managing Director of the Mannheim Hospital, resigned on Thursday. Reason is the part „lack of trust in the house, "said Supervisory Board Chairman and Mannheim Mayor Peter Kurz (SPD) told the news agency „dpa“. Dänzer became Clinical Director in 2009 and is President of the German Hospital Association (DKG). (Ag)