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Bacteria on Old CPAP Masks
Another reason to replace your existing CPAP mask with a new one from time to time (thanks to Ed Grandi, executive director of the American Sleep Apnea Association for bringing this to my attention):
"There is a lot of good research going on in the world sleep apnea medicine as evidenced by the "posters" or abstracts of research presented at the 2009 Associated Professional Sleep Societies meeting in Seattle Washington.
The one that really struck my eye is the following:
Sleep and Breathing: Care of CPAP Equipment a Factor of Compliance and Hygiene.
Quoting from the abstract...
This study was designed to test wheter patients have difficulty adequately cleaning CPAP interfaces and if contaminated equipment increases problems and eventual abandonment. Regular washingt of equipment should be an effectivemeans of controlling bacterial and fungal growth with older interfaces morelikely to be contaminated.
30 patients on CPAP for more than one month were studied. Baterical and fungal cultures were taken from the interfaces and humidifiers. Cultures were classified, photographed, and colonies counted. Culture growth was so significant on the first 20 patients, that a secondary trial of mask washing and repeat culture was added.
Although the cultures grew mostly normal flora, the colony counts were high: 21% of the patients had 100-500 colonies and 48% grew >2000 colonies per plate. There was no correlation of severity or cleaning frequency with colony counts. Mask age was important: with fungal growth from 100% > 1 year old, and only 25% aged 1-3 months. Gram negative bacteria increased almost linearly with mask age. In the secondary trial, interfaces were rewashed, resulting in 90% lower colony counts, unless they were > 1 year old when washing was ineffective,
Conclusion: This pilot study suggests there are high counts of bacterial and fungal flora on CPAP interfaces, despite routine washing, with the older interfaces, more contaminated and resistant to cleaning. Furhter research willbe required to determine wheter increasing frequnecy of mask replacement is effective at reducing bacterial contamination, and ultimely improve patient outcome by influencing CPAP adherence or infection risk."
"There is a lot of good research going on in the world sleep apnea medicine as evidenced by the "posters" or abstracts of research presented at the 2009 Associated Professional Sleep Societies meeting in Seattle Washington.
The one that really struck my eye is the following:
Sleep and Breathing: Care of CPAP Equipment a Factor of Compliance and Hygiene.
Quoting from the abstract...
This study was designed to test wheter patients have difficulty adequately cleaning CPAP interfaces and if contaminated equipment increases problems and eventual abandonment. Regular washingt of equipment should be an effectivemeans of controlling bacterial and fungal growth with older interfaces morelikely to be contaminated.
30 patients on CPAP for more than one month were studied. Baterical and fungal cultures were taken from the interfaces and humidifiers. Cultures were classified, photographed, and colonies counted. Culture growth was so significant on the first 20 patients, that a secondary trial of mask washing and repeat culture was added.
Although the cultures grew mostly normal flora, the colony counts were high: 21% of the patients had 100-500 colonies and 48% grew >2000 colonies per plate. There was no correlation of severity or cleaning frequency with colony counts. Mask age was important: with fungal growth from 100% > 1 year old, and only 25% aged 1-3 months. Gram negative bacteria increased almost linearly with mask age. In the secondary trial, interfaces were rewashed, resulting in 90% lower colony counts, unless they were > 1 year old when washing was ineffective,
Conclusion: This pilot study suggests there are high counts of bacterial and fungal flora on CPAP interfaces, despite routine washing, with the older interfaces, more contaminated and resistant to cleaning. Furhter research willbe required to determine wheter increasing frequnecy of mask replacement is effective at reducing bacterial contamination, and ultimely improve patient outcome by influencing CPAP adherence or infection risk."
Views: 2498
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mike on
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Agreed. It's counter-intuitive but I've heard that the kitchen sink is actually, on average, more dirty than the bathroom toilet! Better re-think whether to brush your teeth in the kitchen, Sleepy Carol ;-)
Rock Hinkle said:I don't know Mike the discovery channel has done many different things proving that a bathroom might actually be the cleanest room in your house, and that your kitchen is probably the worst. Food contaminates produce more bacteria than anything else. You usually don't spend enough time in your bathroom to contaminate it the way you might think. I don't know anyone that eats in the bathroom. Also people are usually a little more methodical when it comes to cleaning their bathrooms. The mythbusters (one of my favorite shows) actually did a show based on the 5 second eating rule. This is the myth that when you drop food you have 5 seconds to pick it up and eating it before it is contaminated. They took culture samples from all of the surface ares in a normal household. The results were very surprising. The kitchen floor was actually worse than a toilet seat.
Mike said:without having read this source, i would imagine a toothbrush would get more bacteria (especially fecal bacteria) than a mask because many people keep their toothbrushes in the bathroom, in close proximity to the toilet. i actually do myself. yuck.
Dan Lyons said:As I said earlier, I'm skeptical of this type of study. This type of “hip shot” hype has almost destroyed the effectiveness of antibiotics.
Here some interesting data to support my position.
"In a healthy animal, the internal tissues, e.g. blood, brain, muscle, etc., are normally free of microorganisms. However, the surface tissues, i.e., skin and mucous membranes, are constantly in contact with environmental organisms and become readily colonized by various microbial species. The mixture of organisms regularly found at any anatomical site is referred to as the normal flora, except by researchers in the field who prefer the term "indigenous microbiota". The normal flora of humans consists of a few eucaryotic fungi and protists, but bacteria are the most numerous and obvious microbial components of the normal flora."
(Full article text from Textbook of Bacteriology)
http://www.textbookofbacteriology.net/normalflora.html
Your toothbrush will get you before that mask will.
"In his book, Why Your Toothbrush May Be Killing You Slowly, James Song, a biochemist from Wisconsin University, suggests that a range of serious health problems, including heart disease, stroke, arthritis and chronic infections, could be linked to unhygienic toothbrushes. Further research by Manchester University found that the average toothbrush contained around ten million germs, including a high percentage of potentially fatal bacteria such as staphylococci, streptococcus, E. coli and candida. Other studies have shown that over time, a single toothbrush can be the breeding ground for trillions of bacteria specimen."
(Full article link on WebMD)
http://www.drmoorhead.com/2008/08/is-there-bacteria-on-your-toothbr...
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Permalink Reply by Judy on
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I'm w/SleepyCarol on this one - other than the toothbrush, kitchen, bathroom discourse. My mother was a LOT cleaner than I am and even she said: "we all have to eat a bushel of dirt before we die". Probably just to console herself as I happily wallowed in mud, made mud pies, etc. We NEED to be exposed to "unhealthies" to develop immunity to them. Our initial immunity comes from our mothers in utero and then from the first initial milk flow (colostrum). After that comes exposure and innoculations and then exposure again. No exposure, no immunity.
Outside of "high risk areas" such as hospitals just plain good ole fashion soap and water is generally sufficient to keep our systems and bacteria in balance. I subscribe to the old saying "my house is clean enought to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy".
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