In February, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee passed legislation aimed at improving medical device safety for patients undergoing procedures using duedenoscopes — snake-like tubes used to see into the stomach that have proved difficult to properly disinfect.
The Preventing Superbugs and Protecting Patients Act was then introduced in early April, which covers necessary device modifications and cleaning instructions — backed up by data — that will help hospitals reprocess scopes. In the wake of this legislative movement, the names of more and more hospitals where patients suffered infections linked to the devices, have come to light.
The Los Angeles Times reported that at least three patients died from a superbug outbreak linked to duodenoscopes at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, Calif. Huntington confirmed the patients were sick in August 2015, but gave no further public updates about their conditions, although the hospital notified Olympus, the device manufacturer, privately, of the deaths, according to the Times.
Additionally, nine patients at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora developed infections linked to the scopes, three of which were ultimately fatal, according to The Denver Post. In a Monday statement, the hospital confirmed that one Olympus-manufactured scope was linked to patient infections this year. The hospital notified all patients who underwent procedures involving the device, according to the Post.
Although hospitals must file incident injury reports with the Food and Drug Administration whenever medical devices are linked to patient harm, the FDA removes the names of the organizations when the documents are made public, which delay public notification that infections have occurred at a particular hospital. Huntington told the LA Times it refrained from making a public statement about the patient infection deaths because the organization was under the impression that patient privacy laws prevented them from doing so.