Triad Group issues product recall of iodine prep pads
e-mail print By Rick Barrett of the Journal Sentinel
March 18, 2011

Triad Group, the Hartland medical products manufacturer that issued a large recall of alcohol wipes suspected of being contaminated with bacteria, has issued another product recall.

On its Web site, Triad says it has recalled Povidone Iodine Prep Pads out of concerns by the Food and Drug Administration that the pads were contaminated with the organism Elizabethkingia meningoseptica.

Last fall, Triad issued an urgent recall of its alcohol swabs and wipes because the products might have been contaminated.

The company said the bacteria could lead to "life-threatening infections" in at-risk populations, including surgical and immune-suppressed patients. The recall, according to the company, was being done out of an "abundance of caution" after one report of a nonlife-threatening skin infection.

Finally found the CDC notes on the issue- here

Regarding microbes living in anti-microbials:

"B. cereus group and Bacillus species are resistant to killing by alcohol (1) and have caused health-care--associated outbreaks of invasive disease (2,3). Pseudoinfections caused by B. cereus--contaminated products also have been reported..."

The 'peusdoinfection' piece is a little confusing: it appears to mean in this case that the appliance-a venous access device, was colonized with the bacteria, and that the colony was shedding broken pieces of bacteria, causing the patient to experience fever and chills; the device was removed, and the patient improved.


How does this happen?
"Data from the 1980 and 1982 outbreaks suggested that P. cepacia and P. aeruginosa, organisms commonly found in water, could colonize water distribution pipes or filters in plants that manufacture iodine solutions.' from an earlier cdc study here .

This is why infection control experts spend so much time teaching people to wash their hands-there are bugs that we cannot kill with common microbicides.

I'm not a scientist, but I always thought that iodine killed everything in the right dosage.

This makes me woder about the basic utility of iodine pads in the first place, if bugs can grow inside the pads.

Enough heat kills everything, except prions, which aren't alive anyway. Everything else kills almost everything. Note that the involved bug did not cause an infection, and did what it did in a severely immune-compromised child. I will never use my fak on an immune-compromised patient, but I am ditching the betadine and alcohol preps, and the attendant false sense of security. I will treat wounds with copious irrigation with soap and water and with humility. Micro-organisms are better at surviving than we are at destroying them. The bugs are developing increasing resistance to our antibiotics, and big pharma has all but ceased antibiotic research cause there is more money in developing drugs for hair-loss, erectile dysfunction, and depression. Given Art's thread about graft and corruption in exploiting BP's response to the oil spill, I believe that the bacteria have taken the moral high ground.

[quote=nursemike.......big pharma has all but ceased antibiotic research cause there is more money in developing drugs for hair-loss, erectile dysfunction, and depression. [/quote]


I think I can save them some money on research: Fix the first two problems, and the third will take care of itself :-)

Good One!