Claxton-Hepburn Medical Center in Ogdensburg is featured in an article in the May issue of Scientific American on curbing hospital infections.

The nation's leading scientific journal is running an article entitled "Beating Back the Bugs: Some hospitals have turned a corner in fighting deadly infections," in which Claxton-Hepburn is said to have taken steps to reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections with simple measures such as having patients on ventilation lie at a 30-degree angle rather than flat. That lowers the incidence of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), a hospital-acquired infection that occurs in 25 percent of all people who require mechanical ventilation, the magazine said.

C-H has also adopted a protocol where sedated patients on ventilation are weaned off the sedation once a day to check their progress, a move which has shortened the average patient stay and lowered the chance of an infection.

Hospital personnel are also doing a daily oral cleaning on those patients.

The measures have resulted in no new VAPs in the five years since Claxton-Hepburn began those procedures.

"With solutions that cost less than the penalties, more hospitals are sure to follow Claxton-Hepburn’s lead," said the article.

"Every year nearly two million hospital-acquired infections claim roughly 100,000 lives and add $45 billion in costs; that is as many lives and dollars as taken by AIDS, breast cancer and auto accidents combined. And with antibiotic resistance rising steadily, those numbers promise to climb even higher," the Scientific American article said.

The article can be seen at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=beating-back-the-bugs.