A hospital is a place of healing, but sometimes patients acquire new medical problems during their stays, such as catheter-related bloodstream infections. To prevent these potentially deadly infections, hospitals traditionally use the blood-thinning drug heparin to block germ-attracting blood clots from forming inside catheters. But a Henry Ford Health System study found that cleaning catheters with an antibiotic combination of gentamicin and citrate, instead of heparin, lowered mortality rates a whopping 68 percent. If widely implemented, this simple procedure could save thousands of lives each year.
Dennis Kunkel Microscopy Inc./Phototake
