CBS2 News Investigation: Flies In Operating Rooms Force VA Hospital To Postpone More Than 80 Surgeri

[driftdiver]

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/05/01/va-hospital-flies-surgeries/

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — A West Los Angeles veterans hospital has had to cancel or postpone dozens of surgeries because of an insect infestation, a CBS2 News investigation has learned.

Investigative Reporter David Goldstein’s three-month investigation included hidden-camera video from inside the hospital.

Here is a full script of Goldstein’s investigation:

In the halls of the VA West Los Angeles Medical Center, these may look like decorative lights, but they’re really flytraps known as flylights.

CBS2 News has learned that more 200 traps had to be installed because of an outbreak of flies that’s gone on for years!

Outside the operating room if you look right above the empty beds, a flytrap.

The same if you look left: more flytraps.

Behind some of the lights our hidden camera found what appears to be insects caught on the glueboards.

[Victoria33]

@driftdiver

My husband had hernia surgery.  Back at home, maybe two days later, he took a shower and the incision burst open with a goodly amount of puss flowing out.

I took him to the emergency room of the hospital that did the surgery, they put him in a room and hooked him up to antibiotics.  The surgery who did the surgery, came in and, with his hands, split the incision completely open - husband screamed.  He stayed there three days until the infection was gone.  The operation site had to heal from the inside out due to that happening. In other words, it could not be sewed back together; the skin was pulled back together, but not stitched again. It made a wide scar due to healing that way.

Surgeon told us the operating room the surgeon used, was washed completely down as the hospital thought that is where he got the bacteria.  There were no flies, but there was something not sterile in that operating room.

Hospitals are a good place to get sick.

[edpc]

@driftdiver

My husband had hernia surgery.  Back at home, maybe two days later, he took a shower and the incision burst open with a goodly amount of puss flowing out.

I took him to the emergency room of the hospital that did the surgery, they put him in a room and hooked him up to antibiotics.  The surgery who did the surgery, came in and, with his hands, split the incision completely open - husband screamed.  He stayed there three days until the infection was gone.  The operation site had to heal from the inside out due to that happening. In other words, it could not be sewed back together; the skin was pulled back together, but not stitched again. It made a wide scar due to healing that way.

Surgeon told us the operating room the surgeon used, was washed completely down as the hospital thought that is where he got the bacteria.  There were no flies, but there was something not sterile in that operating room.

Hospitals are a good place to get sick.

The most likely source of the infection was not the equipment, but the personnel.  You'd be surprised how many healthcare workers are staph carriers.

[mountaineer]

The most likely source of the infection was not the equipment, but the personnel.  You'd be surprised how many healthcare workers are staph carriers.

A family friend was an R.N. in charge of one D.C.-area hospital's efforts to prevent infection. She said part of the problem was doctors who didn't bother to wash their hands.

[edpc]

A family friend was an R.N. in charge of one D.C.-area hospital's efforts to prevent infection. She said part of the problem was doctors who didn't bother to wash their hands.

Yes, unfortunately, many people get lax because there's so much to do during the shift - especially from 7AM to 3PM.  It usually takes something serious like the 80s AIDS scare or the Ebola panic from a few years ago to get widespread compliance.

[the_doc]

A family friend was an R.N. in charge of one D.C.-area hospital's efforts to prevent infection. She said part of the problem was doctors who didn't bother to wash their hands.

That's surely true for in-patient care.  However, Operating Room personnel do wash their hands very, very vigorously before donning (via sterile techniques) gowns, masks, caps, and gloves.  During the operation, they touch nothing in the OR that has not been sterilized in preparation for the surgery.  (That's why the TV shows depict gloved docs and nurses and scrub techs walking around with their hands held up in the air away from even their sterile gowns.  And they never let their hands drop below the plane of the sterile operating field.)

One of the nasty problems about modern infections is that MRSA, although infectious by contact, often produces spontaneous infections with no known recent contact with MRSA.  Some Infectious Disease doctors believe that some folks have MRSA colonizing their sinuses and that the abscesses that we see so often nowadays are somehow "metastasizing" via the bloodstream from the patient's sinuses.

Abscesses, whether post-surgical or not, are becoming a lot more common in my 20+ years of experience.  I used to see about one pretty bad non-surgical, non-trauma-associated skin abscess  per month in Urgent Care  work,  Now, I see about one per week.   

Go figure.