Parts of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center’s intensive care units will soon gleam with a gold shine as plastic keyboards and bed rails are stripped from exam rooms and replaced with copper substitutes for a new medical study.
The four-year UCLA study will calculate whether patients who are treated around surfaces of copper, which is known to kill bacteria on contact, are less likely to contract a hospital-acquired infection.
Diseases that are spread in hospital environments, such as pneumonia and urinary infections, kill about 100,000 people each year ““ more than AIDS, traffic accidents and breast cancer combined, said Daniel Uslan, director of the antimicrobial stewardship program at the David Geffen School of Medicine.
Funding will come from a $2.5 million grant awarded to a team of UCLA researchers on July 1 by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a branch of the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
Right now, copper surfaces are not widely used in hospitals because there is no conclusive evidence that links the metal to health benefits, Uslan said.
The new study aims to provide evidence, with the help of half a dozen researchers from several different departments within UCLA, including the School of Medicine, the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Grants awarded for collaborative research are not uncommon at UCLA because of the school’s easy access to experts in several areas of study, said Thomas Rosenthal, chief medical officer for the Medical Center.
“UCLA has lots of areas of overlap,” he said.
But the subject of the study is unconventional in comparison to previous studies, Rosenthal said. Administrators in the Medical Center were pleasantly surprised to receive the grant because studying nonhuman approaches to eliminate hospital-acquired infections is out of the norm, Rosenthal said.
Many preventative measures for diseases involve human actions, such as frequent hand-washing.
The UCLA study was particularly interesting to officials at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality because it instead incorporates hospital environment and architecture with disease prevention, said Kendall Hall, a medical officer for the agency.
“Even with the best intentions people sometimes forget (to wash their hands. Copper) adds an extra layer of protection for the patient,” said Hall, who is also an emergency room doctor.
Beginning as soon as January 2013, two intensive care units in the Medical Center will be redone to accommodate the trial. In a third of the patient rooms, computer keyboards and mice, patient tables and chair arms, surfaces of carts, drawer knobs and bed rails will all be replaced with copper substitutes.
In the remaining rooms, part of the intensive care units will be covered in stainless steel or traditional hospital materials such as plastic.
Over the duration of the study, researchers will compare the growth rate of bacteria and diseases among the three surfaces.
In addition to studying the medical effects of copper on patients, the researchers will look at the financial impact of copper surfaces on hospitals.
“We like to think that money is not an issue when it come to health but it really is,” Hall said. “If the copper needs to be replaced every year, (researchers) need to analyze if that is worth it (financially).”
With the funding secured, Rosenthal said he is excited to see the study move forward.
“We have a lot of work to do,” he said. “The effort won’t be trivial.”