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Discussion

Worried about Cdiff?

Hi there ...

Have another 'newbie' question.

I'm seeing a lot of news about C-diff lately and was wondering how disturbing it is for you practicing nurses? Is the media blowing it out of proportion like MSRA? ("DRUG RESISTANT STAPH THAT WILL KILL YOU! TONIGHT AT 10!!!!!!" Without telling you that it DOES respond to some meds.)

I understand Cdiff is more common with hospice and geriatric patients and of course ID patients. How worried does it make you to come in contact with it? How common is it for a nurse to be infected with it?

In a previous post I mentioned that I was worried about staph and strep (husband got a nasty case of strep in his elbow in March and was in the hospital for 4 days - never seen him so sick. Don't know how he got it.) However, with lots of reading and thinking on the subject it doesn't bother me as much. The difference with C-diff seems to be it hangs out a lot longer and is only killed with bleach. Seems that MSRA and Strep are easier to control.

Any thoughts? And thanks again for all you do!

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While I am very careful with C-diff patients and follow precaution guidelines to a "T", I have yet to meet a healthy person infected by it. It is part of the normal flora in your intestines and is mostly a risk for people on heavy antibiotic treatment which kills their normal flora allowing C-diff to thrive.

You do realize Clostridium Difficile is found naturally in your intestines right? When you are sick, ill, immunosuppressed, on too many antibiotics which kills off the "Good" bacteria and allows the "bad" bacteria to take over, C-Dif pops up.

Hince why Lactinex, Acidophillus, yogurt, etc are given, to restore natural flora.

Generally oral or IV vancomycin, oral flagyl is used to treat it.

As far as hard to kill when outta the body, its a sporeform, meaning it has a hard shell, meaning it fits in that .01% of bacterium that alcohol can't kill.

We are seeing lots of cases of it right now. We have at least 4 in our 9 bed ICU. I don't worry much about it myself because I follow precautions. We took all of the alcohol hand sanitizer out of those rooms and put up signs on the santizer holder that say "Please wash your hands with soap and water."

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