A new study has found that copper hospital beds in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) harbored an average of 95 percent fewer bacteria than conventional hospital beds, and maintained these low-risk levels throughout patients' stay in hospital. The research is published this week in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. "Hospital-acquired infections sicken approximately 2 million Americans annually, and kill nearly 100,000, numbers roughly equivalent to the number of deaths if a wide-bodied jet crashed every day," said coauthor Michael G. Schmidt, PhD, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston.
They are the eighth leading cause of death in the US. Hospital beds are among the most contaminated surfaces in patient care settings. "Despite the best efforts by environmental services workers, they…
