Treatment of C. difficile

[changeoflife]

Hello everyone! I'd appreciate your help. When I was on clinical rotation at a nursing home, the nurse told me about an alternative treatment for C. difficile that involved inserting a fecal sample from a spouse or relative into the infected person's GI tract (via NG tube or fecal enema). She said that they see a 10-15% success rate. I know this sounds gross, but even a small success rate beats utilizing the gammet of antibiotics.

I'd like to write my course paper on this alternative method, but can't really find much in the nursing magazines. The background data has to be from peer journals or other current hospital research within the US.

Anyone know anything about this, or where I can look?

THanks!

changeoflife

[Blee O'Myacin, BSN, RN]

my husband and I was asked to produce one.

Just the liability involved with doing that seems extreme. What if there is a tear somewhere along the line of administration and you get fecal matter from another person into the patient's blood stream?

And I don't know which method is more disturbing. But that being said, I'm off to do my own literature search!

Blee

Edited to add: I found some references including one in the American Journal of Gastroenterology (but it was a pay site), but here is the link to the Wikipedia entry. There is also fecaltransplant.org to check out if anyone is interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_bacteriotherapy

[CoffeeRTC, BSN, RN]

I found info on this a few years ago. Never heard of one being done. There are online support groups for people with C diff, you might try looking at those for more info.