Environmental decontamination reduces healthcare infections - a systematic review with Alexandra Peters

<p>In this week's episode, Martin Kiernan talks to Alexandra Peters, who works in Prof. Didier Pittet's group at the University Hospitals of Geneva and with a WHO Collaborating Centre. We discuss a new systematic review that demonstrates that there is significant evidence that environmental decontamination reduces healthcare-associated infections and colonisations and also progress on a new Healthcare Environmentsl Hygiene (HEH) self-assessment tool, the results of which will shortly be published.</p> <p>Papers that we discuss are:</p> <p>Peters, A., Schmid, M.N., Parneix, P. et al. Impact of environmental hygiene interventions on healthcare-associated infections and patient colonization: a systematic review. Antimicrob Resist Infect Control 11, 38 (2022). <a href='https://doi.org/10.1186'>https://doi.org/10.1186</a> - <a href='https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13756-022-01075-1#article-info'>https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13756-022-01075-1#article-info</a></p> <p>Accepted paper, shortly to appear in the AJIC website:</p> <p>Peters, A., Schmid, M., deKraker, M. et al. Results of an international pilot survey on healthcare environmental hygiene at the facility level. American Journal of Infection Control (2022)</p> <p> </p> <p>Also mentioned:</p> <p>Brett G Mitchell, Lisa Hall, Nicole White, Adrian G Barnett, Kate Halton, David L Paterson, Thomas V Riley, Anne Gardner, Katie Page, Alison Farrington, Christian A Gericke, Nicholas Graves, An environmental cleaning bundle and health-care-associated infections in hospitals (REACH): a multicentre, randomised trial, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Volume 19, Issue 4, 2019, Pages 410-418, <a href='https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(18)30714-X'>https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(18)30714-X</a> <a href='https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147330991830714X'>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147330991830714X</a></p> <p>Deverick J Anderson, Rebekah W Moehring, David J Weber, Sarah S Lewis, Luke F Chen, J Conrad Schw