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Updated: Sep 7, 2025
Culturing and Maintaining Clostridium difficile in an Anaerobic Environment
Published on: September 14, 2013
Mitigating hospital-onset Clostridioides difficile: The impact of an optimized environmental hygiene program in eight
Philip C Carling1, Lyndsay M O'Hara2, Anthony D Harris3
1Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts.
Objective:
To evaluate the impact of a standardized, process-validated intervention utilizing daily hospital-wide patient-zone sporicidal disinfectant cleaning on incidence density of healthcare-onset Clostridioides difficile infection (HO-CDI) standardized infection ratios (SIRs).
Design:
Multi-site, quasi-experimental study, with control hospitals and a nonequivalent dependent variable.
Setting:
The study was conducted across 8 acute-care hospitals in 6 states with stable endemic HO-CDI SIRs.
Methods:
Following an 18-month preintervention control period, each site implemented a program of daily hospital-wide sporicidal disinfectant patient zone cleaning. After a wash-in period, thoroughness of disinfection cleaning (TDC) was monitored prospectively and optimized with performance feedback utilizing a previously validated process improvement program. Mean HO-CDI SIRs were calculated by quarter for the pre- and postintervention periods for both the intervention and control hospitals. We used a difference-in-differences analysis to estimate the change in the average HO-CDI SIR and HO-CAUTI SIR for the pre- and postintervention periods.
Results:
Following the wash-in period, the TDC improved steadily for all sites and by 18 months was 93.6% for the group. The mean HO-CDI SIRs decreased from 1.03 to 0.6 (95% CI, 0.13-0.75; P = .009). In the adjusted difference-in-differences analysis in comparison to controls, there was a 0.55 reduction (95% CI, -0.77 to -0.32) in HO-CDI (P < .001) or a 50% relative decrease from baseline.
Conclusions:
This study represents the first multiple-site, quasi-experimental study with control hospitals and a nonequivalent dependent variable to evaluate a 4-component intervention on HO-CDI. Following ongoing improvement in cleaning thoroughness, there was a sustained 50% decrease in HO-CDI SIRs compared to controls.
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