How Clean Is the Linen at My Hospital? The Mucorales on Unclean Linen Discovery Study of Large United States Transplant and Cancer Centers. (9th October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sundermann, Alexander J; Clancy, Cornelius J; Pasculle, A William; Liu, Guojun; Cumbie, Richard B; Driscoll, Eileen; Ayres, Ashley; Donahue, Lisa; Pergam, Steven A; Abbo, Lilian; Andes, David R; Chandrasekar, Pranatharthi; Galdys, Alison L; Hanson, Kimberly E; Marr, Kieren A; Mayer, Jeanmarie; Mehta, Seema; Morris, Michele I; Perfect, John; Revankar, Sanjay G; Smith, Becky; Swaminathan, Sankar; Thompson, George R; Varghese, Merin; Vazquez, Jose; Whimbey, Estella; Wingard, John R; Nguyen, M Hong
• Is Part Of: Clinical infectious diseases. Volume 68:Number 5(2019)
• Page Start: 850
• Page End: 853
• Publication Date: 2018-10-09
• Subjects: healthcare linens -- microbiologic surveillance -- Mucorales -- Rhizopus -- Syncephalastrum; Communicable diseases -- Periodicals; 616.905
• DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciy669
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1058-4838

Abstract

Abstract: Mucormycosis outbreaks have been linked to contaminated linen. We performed fungal cultures on freshly-laundered linens at 15 transplant and cancer hospitals. At 33% of hospitals, the linens were visibly unclean. At 20%, Mucorales were recovered from >10% of linens. Studies are needed to understand the clinical significance of our findings.