Hospital water point-of-use filtration: a complementary strategy to reduce the risk of nosocomial infection.

Cholera, hepatitis and typhoid are well-recognized water-borne illnesses that take the lives of many every year in areas of uncontrollable flood, but far less attention is afforded to the allegedly safe potable water in affluent nations and the presumed healthful quality of water in communities and hospitals. Recent literature, however, points to increasing awareness of serious clinical sequelae particularly experienced by immunocompromised patients at high risk for disease and death from exposure to water-borne microbes in hospitals. This review reflects the literature indicting hospital water as an important source for nosocomial infections, examines patient populations at greatest risk, uncovers examples of failures in remedial water treatment methods and the reasons for them, and introduces point-of-use water filtration as a practical alternative or complementary component of an infection control strategy that may reduce the risk of nosocomial infections.

Contamination control in nursing with filtration: part 2: emerging rationale for bedside (final) filtration of prestorage leukocyte-reduced blood products.

The first part of this 2-part series focused on the manufacture of filters and the application of filtration technology to intravenous fluids and point-of-care hospital water. This second part describes an apparent emerging potential for final filtration defined as bedside filtration of blood and component blood products leukocyte-reduced at the blood center prior to storage. Final filtration serves to further reduce the leukocyte burden in a previously leukocyte-reduced blood product.

Contamination control in nursing with filtration. Part 1: filters applied to intravenous fluids and point-of-use hospital water.

Filters often are viewed as screens with openings smaller than the particles intended to be removed by a process technically known as direct interception. However, filter manufacturing embraces far more advanced technological approaches, with an evolution toward selective removal of cells or soluble constituents from complex physiologic solutions. An appreciation of filtration development makes it easy to understand how differently manufactured filters with the same claims may not perform identically.