Donate to Science & Enterprise

S&E on Mastodon

S&E on LinkedIn

S&E on Flipboard

Please share Science & Enterprise

Patients’ Mobile Phones Found to Carry Resistant Bacteria

Mobile phone (Research.gov)

(Research.gov)

Researchers at Inonu University in Turkey found many mobile phones used by hospital patients and visitors to carry potentially dangerous bacteria, with some of those bacteria considered resistant to antibiotics. Their findings appear in the June issue of the American Journal of Infection Control (paid subscription required).

Inonu University’s Mehmet Sait Tekerekoglu and six colleagues tested 200 mobile phones belonging to people in the hospital community: 133 phones belonged to patients, patients’ companions, and visitors, while 67 units belonged to medical employees. The team took swab samples from the three main parts of most mobile phones — keypad, microphone, and ear piece.

The researchers found that nearly four in 10 (39.6%) of the patient group phones tested positive for pathogens, compared to two in 10 (20.6 %) phones belonging to health care workers.  In addition, seven of the patient phones had multidrug resistant pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and multiple resistant gram-negative organisms. None of the health care workers’ phones, however, tested positive for multidrug resistant pathogens.

A 2009 study for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control finds about 4.5 hospital acquired infections for every 100 admissions. A WHO survey in 2002 covering 55 hospitals in Europe, Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and Western Pacific found 8.7 percent with nosocomial infections — those resulting from treatment in a health care facility. The costs to hospitals are substantial; the CDC report estimates annual direct medical costs of hospital-acquired infections ranges from $28 billion to nearly $34 billion.

Read more: CDC Awards Grants to Reduce Health Care Infections

*     *     *

1 comment to Patients’ Mobile Phones Found to Carry Resistant Bacteria