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Following reports of “superbug” infections tied to contaminated medical scopes in Seattle and elsewhere, the federal Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday issued additional guidelines for hospitals to prevent the spread of potentially deadly pathogens. In a detailed MedWatch warning, the agency suggested several specific steps to address the infections detected at Virginia Mason Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, and elsewhere. The advice followed a meeting of experts in May. (Aleccia, 8/4)

Unless hospitals and other health care facilities begin cooperatively fighting the country’s most aggressive antibiotic-resistant germs, infection rates could increase as much as 10 percent over the next five years, hitting about 340,000 people annually, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report released today. Individual institutional efforts, the study said, will not be sufficient to combat these germs. Part of the problem, it notes, is that they are spreading as infected patients move between hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities. For the most part, however, efforts to catch and prevent these infections are being done autonomously. (Rau, 8/4)

With the United States facing an increasing number of drug-resistant “superbugs,” federal health officials said a relatively simple solution could prevent more than half a million of the most deadly infections over five years. Hospitals or nursing homes try to control infections on their own, but they rarely tell each other when a patient being transferred into another facility is carrying antibiotic-resistant bacteria. That lack of information greatly increases the risk that the germ will be spread. (Sun, 8/4)