6 S U P P L E M E N T T O O U T P A T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E M A Y 2 0 1 5
T
he deadly outbreak at the UCLA
Medical Center in Los Angeles
that was linked to difficult-to-
clean duodenoscopes certainly
got people's attention, but trou-
ble had been colonizing in reprocessing rooms
across the country for years.
In the UCLA case, 2 patients who underwent
endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatogra-
phy (ERCP) contracted carbapenem-resistant
Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) from dirty scopes
and died. Outbreaks related to the use of dirty
duodenoscopes occurred in 2012 at the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and in
2013 at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in
Park Ridge, Ill. Earlier this year, Virginia Mason
Medical Center in Seattle, Wash., reported that
11 of 32 infected patients subsequently died.
New reports suggest duodenoscopes were
linked to the infections of 281 patients with a
strand of E. coli at Hartford Hospital in
Connecticut late last year.
The FDA says it received 75 Medical Device
Reports between January 2013 and December
Inside the Deadly
Duodenoscope Outbreaks
Is enough being done to
protect patients from
dangerous infections?
Daniel Cook | Executive Editor
"When people die, you
could always argue that the
response wasn't quick
enough."
— John Allen, MD, MBA, AGAF
z ACTION STEPS Efforts to prevent
duodenoscope-related infections have
ramped up in recent months.
