As we always say, hospital is no place to be if you’re sick, and a new study backs this up. It has discovered that some patients are likely to be readmitted to hospital within 30 days – because of an infection they picked up on their first stay.
Hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA and C. difficile were the main culprits, and infected patients were up to 60 per cent more likely to be back in hospital within 30 days than a patient who didn’t succumb. If they survived the first 30 days, they were still likely to be readmitted within a year.
Overall, every patient who picked up an infection while in hospital would need further hospital treatment within 12 months, say researchers from University of Maryland Medical Centre.
They tracked 136,000 patients who had been admitted to the centre over an eight-year period, and discovered that 4,737 of those picked up an infection while in the hospital.
(Source: Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, 2012; 33:6).
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