Combined efforts from DCASIP faculty, led by Dr. Art Baker, with faculty from the Infectious Diseases Divisions at Duke University Medical Center and the Durham VA Hospital resulted in the latest publication in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases: Tap Water Avoidance Decreases Rates of Hospital-Onset Pulmonary Nontuberculous Mycobacteria (abstract on PubMed).
The team analyzed the impact of a hospital tap water avoidance protocol on respiratory isolation of nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM). After protocol implementation, hospital-onset episodes of respiratory NTM isolation on high risk units decreased from 41.0 to 9.9 episodes per 10,000 patient-days (incidence rate ratio, 0.24; 95% confidence interval, 0.17-0.34; P&.0001).