Sep. 8, 2009 Giving critically ill hospital patients a daily
bath with a mild, soapy solution of the same antibacterial agent
used by surgeons to “scrub in” before an operation can
dramatically cut down, by as much as 73 percent, the number of
patients who develop potentially deadly bloodstream infections,
according to a new study by patient safety experts at The Johns
Hopkins Hospital and five other institutions. Bloodstream
infections, they say, strike as many as one in five patients in
hospital intensive care units and up their chances of dying by
as much 25 percent. Even when they are not fatal, such
infections have been reported to lengthen hospital stays by an
average of a full week and add as much as $40,000 in costs. The
new study, described this summer in the June issue of the
journal Critical Care Medicine, tracked daily neck-to-toe sponge
baths with a mild, 4 percent solution of chlorhexidine
glutonate, given to 2,650 ICU patients at six different U.S.
hospitals. Chlorhexidine glutonate is the same