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463 C.DIFF
DEATHS - 22 HOSPITALS -
2 YEARS
BY NAOMI POWELL and JOAN WALTERS
At least 460 patients infected with the lethal superbug C. difficile have died in Ontario hospitals over the past 30 months.
A tally by The Spectator shows that 463 infected patients died at just 22 of Ontario’s157 hospitals. The deaths occurred between January 2006 and May 2008.
New figures compiled by the newspaper show C. diff has assaulted more hospitals and claimed more lives than previously known.
Health Minister David Caplan, who replaced George Smitherman last month, has said the government has no plans tocall an inquiry.
Families and opposition politicians have criticized the Liberals for failing to take more aggressive action since a lethal strain of C. diff arrived in Ontario in 2006.
Conservative Leader John Tory said yesterday the rising deaths reconfirm the need for a probe into the full scope of C. diff.
Both Burlington’s Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital and Barrie’s Royal Victoria Hospital have been hard hit by C. diff. In Burlington, 91 patients infected with the bacterium died, 62 of them directly from the bug. In Barrie, 51 infected patients died, 24 directly as a result of C. diff.
No one in the provincial government has ever tabulated the full number of deaths from the bug.
Ontario’s chief medical officer of health has so far been able to confirm only 22 outbreaks in 19 hospitals from November2006 to May 2008, but does not know the number who died in those incidents.
Experts such as infection specialist Dr.Michael Gardam have said The Spectator’s ongoing tally of C. diff cases is only the tip of the iceberg. Some hospitals have not declared outbreaks, but have reported significant numbers of deaths.
Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital says 27 patients infected withC. diff died from January 2007 toApril 2008. C. diff was cited as afactor in 17 of the deaths.
Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital in Windsor had 37 deaths from C. diff from April 2006 to March 2008.
Data on C. diff prevalence in Ontariois scant because the superbug has never been a reportable disease.
C. diff has been blamed for 2,000 deaths in Quebec.
Hospitals use a variety of methods to collect information on C. diff and to decide whether an official outbreak should be declared. That all changes Sept. 30 when mandatory reporting begins.
Dr. Michael Baker, the Ontario patient safety adviser in charge of designing the reporting system, says there will be a standard definition for what constitutes an outbreak. But there is no intention to require hospitals to report deaths.
Baker says that’s because determining whether C. diff caused orcontributed to a death is a complicated procedure that relies on the individual judgment of the expert looking at the case.
Hospitals like Jo Brant and Royal Victoria have called in outside specialists to look back through charts to determine which cases were directlyl inked to C. diff.
Baker, physician-in-chief of Toronto’s University Hospital Network, says he is “aware of the difficulty in making that judgment” and does not believe requiring hospitals to report deaths would be productive.
Few of Ontario’s hospitals have gone through a chart examination to determine numbers of deaths. However, as public concern escalates, many hospitals are voluntarily tabulating their fatalities.
The Spectator’s previous C. diff tally showed 264 deaths at seven hospitals since 2006.
The following 22 institutions have voluntarily disclosed the
number of patients infected with C. diff who died in their hospitals
since 2006. Not all hospitals had complete data, and some hospitals
reported data for only a short timeframe, such as during an official
outbreak. The majority of the deaths have been linked directly to
the disease, but some patients died of other factors while infected.
The Spectator surveyed an additional eight hospitals that either
reported no deaths or had insufficient data. They are not counted.
