This is very sad but also very important: Deaths in mold infections confound Pittsburgh hospital.
Story highlights from CNN
- Fungus infections occasionally befall transplant patients, and they can be deadly
- University of Pittsburgh Medical Center struggles to find source of mold after three transplant patients’ deaths
- The common mold is harmless to people with relatively normal immune systems
Some key quotes:
WTAE reported that the first two patients who died stayed in the same room in the cardiothoracic ICU at UPMC Presbyterian.
…
Mold deposits were found in toilets and behind walls in the unit, and UPMC closed it temporarily and sent in a team to assess and clean the area. UPMC doesn’t know how the mold got there, the TV station reported.
…
The air quality at UPMC Montefiore has also been checked for mold. “We have not received any concerning results,” UPMC said in a statement. Still, it has replaced all of its germ-catching air filters.
This is important because many people working on hospitals and the built environment focus their attention only on organisms that are what one could call “normal” pathogens that cause health problems even when infecting healthy people. But these mold apparently are a kind that is only a problem to the immune suppressed. This means that they standard surveys for known pathogens may be insufficient and suggests to me that there may be key benefits to broader surveys looking at all the microbes in hospitals.
Another aspect of the article that is on interest – CNN reports:
And it is sending in a disinfecting robot to its ICUs to zap any germs with ultraviolet light. Nicknamed “Violet,” it looks like R2-D2 from “Star Wars” with an extendable neck and a camera flash on steroids.
Sounds cool right? Well, maybe. I have not seen a lot published on whether or how well such “sterilization” robots work and whether if they do work well there are any side effects (e.g., killing all the microbes in a place may not always be a good idea).
To me this story presents another good case study for looking at when and how microbial surveys of the built environment should be done. I am not sure what the solution is here or in other cases. But it is important to remember that organisms not normally pathogenic can cause problems in certain populations.