A Seattle health agency warned Monday that the scopes that caused a superbug outbreak at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center may have caused even more infections than those currently known.
“We suspect endoscope-associated transmission of pathogenic bacteria might be both more common than recognized and not adequately prevented by current endoscope reprocessing guidelines,” the report stated.
The report, published by officials from King County’s public health department in Seattle and other institutions, analyzed another superbug outbreak that took place at the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle.
The analysis comes about a month and a half after duodenoscopes manufactured by the Olympus Corp. of the Americas were found to have potentially exposed more than 170 patients at the UCLA medical center and were linked to the deaths of two of them. UCLA patients and families of patients have since filed seven lawsuits against Olympus alleging negligence and wrongful death, among other charges. The company issued new scope cleaning guidelines last week.
Olympus and UCLA could not be reached for comment.
The King County’s public health department reviewed laboratory results, medical records, endoscopy reports and endoscope reprocessing procedures and concluded that currently recommended cleaning guidelines of these endoscopes are not vigorous enough and need to be re-evaluated.
According to the report, although the Virginia Mason Medical Center carefully followed the instructions on cleaning the scopes provided by Olympus, it still experienced a superbug outbreak from 2012 to 2013 in which 32 people were infected, 11 of whom died, according to the Los Angeles Times.
A spokesperson from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in an email that the problematic design of Olympus’ endoscope caused the superbug outbreak at UCLA. The department’s investigation said there were no breaches in infection control protocol at the UCLA medical center.
Despite the outbreaks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended the continued use of the scopes as they are needed to perform about 500,000 endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography procedures a year in the U.S.
The Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center continues to use the endoscopes while following the manufacturer’s updated guidelines, which were validated by Food and Drug Administration.
Compiled by Bonnie Ni, Bruin contributor.