Unprecedented pandemic infection control measures may have helped reduce Clostridioides difficile infections in the United States but at a cost, according to a new study.
In a national sample of U.S. hospitals, CDI prevalence decreased between April 2020 and March 2021 when compared to the same prior-year period, reported Kelly Reveles, PharmD, PhD, of The University of Texas at Austin. The rate of these infections did not change, however, and deaths and treatment costs were higher, she and her colleagues found.
The similar rate of decline during both periods indicates that the prevalence was already falling pre-pandemic, according to a CIDRAP News report on the study. But COVID-19-related improvements in infection control practices in hospitals, as well as outpatient settings, may have contributed to lower transmission, they theorized.
The primary drivers of the CDI decrease were hospital inpatients, but outpatient infection prevalence also fell. Patient costs, meanwhile, increased by an average of about $2,000 between the two study periods, and all-cause mortality rose from 5.5% in the pre-COVID-19 period to 7.4% in the COVID-19 period.
Targeted interventions to prevent and treat CDI effectively should be a future goal, the researchers concluded.
Full findings were published in in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.
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