After being treated at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center, nearly 180 people may have been exposed to a potentially dangerous bacteria that’s resistant to antibiotic treatment, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday. Two deaths have been linked to the outbreak so far. And federal officials are warning that the source of the “superbug” spread is probably a commonly used medical scope.
Seven patients at UCLA have been officially infected with CRE, the deadly superbug that’s been rapidly spreading throughout the United States’ hospitals over the past several years. CRE bacteria are virtually untreatable with our current antibiotics. In the medical community, CRE are known as “nightmare bacteria” because they have a particularly high mortality rate compared to other bugs.
The medical scope in question is called a duodenoscope, a tool in the field of gastroenterology that offers a less invasive way to examine a patient’s digestive tract. Duodenoscopes are slightly different than the tools used in routine colonoscopies; they have a flexible tube that can be inserted in the mouth, throat, stomach, or small intestine to help drain fluids from the pancreatic and biliary ducts. These scopes are used on at least 500,000 patients each year.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the UCLA patients involved in the outbreak were all having their pancreatic systems examined with the help of a duodenoscope.
The flexible nature of the duodenoscope makes it hard to effectively sterilize, and medical investigators have linked the tools to an increased risk of CRE infections. In previous outbreaks in Chicago and Seattle, duodenoscopes have infected dozens of people with CRE. At the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, eleven people died.
“These outbreaks at UCLA and other hospitals could collectively be the most significant instance of disease transmission ever linked to a contaminated reusable medical instrument,” Lawrence Muscarella, a hospital-safety consultant who has identified at least six superbug outbreaks stemming from contaminated duodenoscopes, told the Los Angeles Times.
Despite the growing evidence in this area, the tool’s manufacturer and officials from the Food and Drug Administration have not made many efforts to publicize the problem. But after the Times’ initial story was published, the FDA was forced to publicly respond to the growing controversy.
In a statement, the agency warned doctors and hospitals that duodenoscopes do carry a risk of infection if they’re not cleaned properly. “Meticulously cleaning duodenoscopes prior to high-level disinfection should reduce the risk of transmitting infection, but may not entirely eliminate it,” the statement warned. An FDA spokesperson also said that federal officials are “actively working” with manufacturers to figure out how to better prevent infections.
CRE tends to strike patients with compromised immune systems who are receiving treatment through catheters and ventilators — but health experts are worried that it will eventually start spreading outside of hospitals, too.
In general, the issue of antibiotic resistance is much bigger than CRE. Thanks to the improper use of antibiotics, common bugs are evolving to become resistant to drugs. We’re running out of treatments for infections like like malaria, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, and whooping cough. By some estimates, superbugs could eventually kill 10 million people each year if we don’t figure out how to stop them.
Medical experts have been trying to sound the alarm for years. In 2012, World Health Organization head Margaret Chan warned that the weakening of antibiotics will mean the “end of modern medicine as we know it.” In 2013, England’s chief medical officer predicted an impending “antibiotic apocalypse” when people will return to dying from routine infections. Nonetheless, research into creating new antibiotics has been sluggish, largely because it costs a lot of money to invest in experimental drugs.