It took fast-acting doctors at a Colorado hospital to flag problems with tainted alcohol wipes now tied to a massive recall and growing reports of potentially deadly infections, including the case of a 10-year-old boy already battling leukemia.
Medical experts at The Children’s Hospital in Aurora said they became alarmed last fall when a few youngsters developed bloodstream infections caused by the rare bacteria Bacillus cereus.
“It just didn’t make sense,” said Dr. Christine Nyquist, the hospital’s medical director of infection prevention. “Based on the kind of patients they were, the organism, the bacteria, didn’t make sense.”
They included Peyton Armstrong, 10, of Glenwood Springs, Colo., who developed a high fever and intense pain last October within 12 hours of placement of an IV line and a medical port to start chemotherapy for leukemia.
“He was on the brink of death,” said Jessica Armstrong, 40, Peyton’s mother. “The cancer didn’t even matter at that point.”
Within weeks, hospital officials were stunned to confirm that Peyton’s infection — along with what Nyquist would describe only as "a couple"of others — was caused by contaminated alcohol wipes produced by the hospital’s sole supplier: the Triad Group of Hartland, Wis.
**Hospital used 2,500 wipes a day
**“This is something really common in use in hospitals,” said Nyquist, noting that the hospital uses about 2,500 wipes each day. “When that is identified as the common source, everyone kind of goes, ‘Wow.’”
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