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Article: Are hospitals becoming more dangerous? (nosocomial infections, includes what you can do to make your hospital stay safer)
- Article from:
- Newsletter-People's Medical Society
- Article date:
- December 1, 1990
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 People's Medical Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ARE HOSPITALS BECOMING MORE DANGEROUS?
There are invisible terrorists lurking in the corners of hospital rooms and stalking hospital corridors. These combatants descend upon the weak and unwary and sneer at modern medicine's drug-based weapons. No, the terrorists are not war-costumed warriors but nosocomial infections--hospital-acquired infections that are responsible for between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths a year.
Nosocomial infections skulk through every hospital in the country. According to National Foundation for Infectious Disease figures cited in the American College of Physicians' Observer (March 1989), two million patients get nosocomial infections ...