In this week's episode, Martin Kiernan talks to Alexandra Peters, who works in Prof. Didier Pittet's group at the University Hospitals of Geneva and with a WHO Collaborating Centre. We discuss a new systematic review that demonstrates that there is significant evidence that environmental decontamination reduces healthcare-associated infections and colonisations and also progress on a new Healthcare Environmentsl Hygiene (HEH) self-assessment tool, the results of which will shortly be published.

Papers that we discuss are:

Peters, A., Schmid, M.N., Parneix, P. et al. Impact of environmental hygiene interventions on healthcare-associated infections and patient colonization: a systematic review. Antimicrob Resist Infect Control 11, 38 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186 - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13756-022-01075-1#article-info

Accepted paper, shortly to appear in the AJIC website:

Peters, A., Schmid, M., deKraker, M. et al. Results of an international pilot survey on healthcare environmental hygiene at the facility level. American Journal of Infection Control (2022)

Also mentioned:

Brett G Mitchell, Lisa Hall, Nicole White, Adrian G Barnett, Kate Halton, David L Paterson, Thomas V Riley, Anne Gardner, Katie Page, Alison Farrington, Christian A Gericke, Nicholas Graves, An environmental cleaning bundle and health-care-associated infections in hospitals (REACH): a multicentre, randomised trial, The Lancet Infectious Diseases,

Deverick J Anderson, Rebekah W Moehring, David J Weber, Sarah S Lewis, Luke F Chen, J Conrad Schwab, Paul Becherer, Michael Blocker, Patricia F Triplett, Lauren P Knelson, Yuliya Lokhnygina, William A Rutala, Daniel J Sexton, Effectiveness of targeted enhanced terminal room disinfection on hospital-wide acquisition and infection with multidrug-resistant organisms and Clostridium difficile: a secondary analysis of a multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial with crossover design (BETR Disinfection), The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Volume 18, Issue 8, 2018, Pages 845-853, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(18)30278-0 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309918302780