Cell phones belonging to hospital staff were found to be tainted with bacteria — including the drug-resistant MRSA superbug — and may be a source of hospital-acquired infections, according to study released Friday. Researchers from the Ondokuz Mayis University in Turkey led by Fatma Ulger tested the phones and dominant hands of 200 doctors and nurses working in hospital operating rooms and intensive care units. Ninety-five percent of the mobile phones were contaminated with at least one type of bacteria, with the potential to cause illness ranging from minor skin irritations to deadly disease.
Nearly 35 percent carried two types of bacteria, and more than 11 percent carried three or more different species of bugs, the study found. Most worrying, one in eight of the handsets showed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a virulent strain that has emerged as a major health threat in hospitals around the world. Only 10 percent of staff regularly cleaned their phones, even if most followed hygiene guidelines for hand washing, the study noted. “These mobile phones could act as a reservoir of infection which may facilitate patient-to-patient transmission of bacteria in a hospital setting,” the authors warned.
Several strains of drug-resistant bacteria are generally harmless to healthy people but can become lethal to hospital patients in weakened conditions. The bacteria slip into open wounds and through catheters or ventilator tubes, typically causing pneumonia or bloodstream infections. In the United States, where national statistics are available, MRSA is the cause of more than 60 percent of all hospital infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MRSA in 2005 infected 94,000 people and killed 19,000 in the United States.
Just another reason to dislike cellphones.
Gee–bacterial infections in a country that doesn’t use toilet paper?
Surprising.
Just another reason to avoid hospitals!
So — it’s an old graph because of a news blackout, or what?
It has also been found that the neck ties of Doctors are massive sources of infection. It’s so bad that a number of UK hospitals have ordered surgeons to stop wearing ties.
I just cleaned my phone. Glass cleaner seems to work well 😉
Never allow anyone in a hospital setting touch you without donning a pair of gloves just prior to contact. I have spent plenty of time in these establishments to know that much.
Never use their pens to sign informed consent or admitting documentation. They always have bad bugs on them also!
Never use their telephones. Use their “facilities” only after you glove up.
It really is common sense.
This is news to you ?
If you get an infection during your “stay” at the hospital your family will not be told that you died of an infection that you acquired at the hospital but rather you illness was from a “Nosocomial infection”
Nothing new about this – just the medical terms
Stay in new clean hospitals is the message for as short a time as you possibly can.
Witchdoctors burned down the mud huts of the village dead.
Might be due to the fact that so many are going to the emergency room to have their cell phones removed from their rectum.
I instantly thought about the ending of “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” and how we are all descendants of telephone cleaners.
Remember the good old days when all we had to worry about was those syphlitic, tuberculin pay phones?
Did she do a control test of cell phones outside of the hospital? Are they just as infected with such bacteria as the phones she looked at? For example, could she examine the phones of college students?
Did she also examine other commonly handled items inside the hospital and compared their bacteria counts to cell phones? Did she look at door handles, counter tops, keyboards, mice, pens, drinking fountains, wallets, eye glasses, remote controls, etc.?
My gut tells me that the problem is not unique to cell phones. It is just where she happened to look. If so, then that is sloppy research, sloppy reporting, or both.
My daughters boyfriend just died 3 weeks ago from MRSA. He was only 19 years old. This is a dangerous health problem.
lol..this is a story with a purpose
i saw this headline last night and laughed. -thinking “oh, look, another “fear factor story” -wonder what company needs a
sales boost or government contract
no doubt the article is dressed up so some creative entrepreneur can sell special *medical grade protective cellphone sleeves that cost 20 cents each to every person in the medical field for $20.
(btw: the study infers to create antiseptic cell phones. -viva la capitalism!)
SO..
i thought..since DU is running it, lets see if the story holds water..or should it get a coveted DU BS-Meter award… ;p
on with the rabble..
how is it that the study is out barely 24hrs and seems to be on every news wire, mainstream or obscure? i mean it’s saturated.
-something stinks..
practically every health-yadayada.org, news
and blog site has picked it up.. i’m sure it’ll be run on mainstream media within 36hrs, along with followup OpEd pieces outlining this “hidden danger” and the guidelines to protect yourself against it.
-nobody was killed or hurt, or infected
by a cell phone, so whats the big deal?
-and the study was done in another country
where we cant question the people (and their motivations) behind the study that easily.
—
anyway..to start off..
maybe if they took, 2 minutes to wash their hands (and phone, if used) between patients with something akin to lemmongrass, there would be no problem.
-you’ll find several types of bacteria
on *anything* that potentially comes in
contact with the mouth(and errant spit) while speaking. that null and voids the 95%
figure as typical “alarmist reporting”
-esp since there are symbiotic forms of
staph and other bacteria present in
the mouth and um, other areas of the
body.
bacteria is everywhere.
20min later..
i managed track down the study (link below)
IMO, the study was flawed and rigged for results favoring a nice little headline
story.
someone needed a quick, cheap *study.
they went around the ICU and OR staff and swabbed everyone’s hands and phones, took some notes, sent the swabs off to the lab. -5 days later Voila! headline news story to spam..
1) they had no control groups to compare to.
-nor did they sample HCW/staff rotating on regular patient floors to compare to.
2) they picked people who work in the ICU
and OR rooms, of which we know nothing about.
-what type of patients were in the ICU and OR rooms that study group came contact with? most importantly, -did they have patients knowingly infected MRSA already? (which would make a huge difference.) -were any of them “floated”
to infectious disease units??
3) oddly..the study appears to have two MRSA results. one says 52% (or more than half) of the phones were infected with MRSA. -and at the end of the study, a table shows 50 phones infected.. would 50 out of 200 phones be
1 in 4?
from the study:
“”Those S. aureus strains isolated from mobile phones of 52.0 % and those strains isolated from hands of 37.7 % were methicillin resistant.””
am i wrong?
someone please take a look at the study and show me how they arrived at “1 in 8 phones infected with MRSA”
i’m not a ratio wizard..
(S. aureus is the MRSA)
*technically, if you hold to the study, -the
press release is of course, using massaged numbers. -as i thought, they reworded the study for *maximum effect* -they also rounded up numbers of infection and rounded down the numbers for routine cleaning of the phones.
so to nitpic, the press did not even sight accurate numbers off the study..if your going
to sight a study, dont fudge the numbers!
from the study:
—
“The rate of bacterial contamination of mobile phones is 94.5 %”
“”It was found that 49.0 % of phones grew one bacterial species, 34.0 % two different species, 11.5 % three or more different species and no bacterial growth were identified in 5.5% of phones.””
—
so the press embellished and rather than use the studies 49.0% for ONE bacteria, they used
a technically accurate, though rounded up statement of 95% of phones with one or more
bacteria..from the opening Result statement.
(if you cant sell them the steak, sell them the sizzle comes to mind)
**further, the study sites another study in which only 10% of the phones tested had any bacteria. -which kinda makes this study even more suspect.
(in my opinion, this validates my accusations
of a “tailored study)
-of course, the press wouldn’t want to include that other study’s results..
anyway, i just wanted to point out the typical
abuse and dramatization of information of the press.our supposed watchdogs. -caveat emptor.
-given how they worked the numbers
and made sure this study hit every website that mattered and even ones that don’t, i’d say this is part one of an expanded cell phone story.
-or they are warming us up to insure
adoption of new protocols or products in
the pipeline with precedence sighted in this study.
-or, rather than just tell us (and HCW’s) to clean up our acts, they prefer to use the tried
and true method of fear mongering.
bottom line: you cant trust the press to give you accurate information about anything. -they’ll always spin it.
Link to study:
http://ann-clinmicrob.com/content/8/1/7
(PDF of full study -15 pages is at bottom of page)
-s
oh btw, i am not trying to diminish the hazards that MRSA presents.
i have had MRSA twice. -lost half my pelvis and had two femoral head resection because of it. -infected by hospital staff. i was septic at the time (extremely weakened) so i got worst case scenario. 🙁
it is no joke.
-s
When I was in college biology, the prof said MRSA was really only a problem in the US, and it was a problem because we feed our cattle corn (necessitating antibiotics to treat the resultant stomach ulcers that thrive due to the changed ph). The bacteria in our environments thus grow resistant to most drugs because they are constantly attacked when fed to cattle. So, apparently in Holland or somewhere stopped US beef imports, and the problem disappeared. Anybody know if there is any truth to that?
I don’t care if you have MRSA, we have a contract. Said by one ISP on planet earth.
@#1 – Toilet paper is actually a less-sanitary way of cleaning than some other methods.
#15 -most of what i’ve seen about EU nations (and some of asian) not excepting american beef
is because the feed is GMO based, (including corn) along with growth hormone and
antibiotics.
-also, most only allow GMO foods for animal feed. -or have to have products GMO labeled
that contain >5% GMO
many studies have come recently that paint a pretty bad picture for GMO..
-anyway…if you really know the potential clusterf*ck of health that EMF/cell phones can
foist upon you, read this chapter from the book Body Electric by robert o. becker. -well respected research scientist from the 80’s..
– have the book.. some very interesting (and eye-opening) discoveries in it…(about $16)
highly recommended.
anyway: dig this mountain of research from both russian and US on EMF effects on biological systems:
http://angelfire.com/or/mctrl/maxwellhammer.html
also..read about one his patents here:
“Dr Robert O. Becker:
Silver Iontophoresis (Regeneration by Silver Ions STEM CELLS”
http://rexresearch.com/becker/becker1.htm
-and this stuff has been known since the 70’s..
-s
PS.. i learned in the 90’s that silver will clear up MRSA in a pinch. -verified in ’98
by personal experience. (using silver
colloid, -one week to completly iradicate it.
-no scarring either)
one of natures dirty little secrets,
apparently.
-s
It’s incredible that the place that should heal you can actually get you sick or even kill you. I would be very firm about anyone touching you in a hospital always wear gloves and wash hands before examinations.
Oh my, very interesting article here. I had never thought that cell phones in the hospital can have such a bad influence to the patients. Of course it is doctor’s fault, if he can’t keep his phone clean. And if cell phones can spread MRSA, we must do something about that. Maybe forbid phones in the hospitals.. Weak patients can get various dangerous viruses and it is not a joke. Thanks for this great article, it is interesting to read about something you have never thought about before.