In a follow-up to last month’s “Fighting the waterborne menace” article (HEJ – March 2010), Dr Tom Makin, directorate manager, medical microbiology, at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust, and Martin Pride, new business development, at Kemper UK & Ireland, examine how Legionella has become a significant potential issue in hospital water systems, and discuss a novel, venturi-based engineering system co-developed by Kemper and a German university,
and recently successfully trialled at a Liverpool hospital, which ensures constant water circulation, significantly reducing the risk of both biofilm, and consequently Legionella, build-up.
Legionnaire’s disease (LD) is an atypical pneumonia normally contracted by inhaling aerosols or tiny droplets generated from water containing virulent strains of the Legionella bacterium. Symptoms can vary, but the majority of cases display flu-like symptoms, including fever, dry cough, myalgia (muscle pain), and headache. Other symptoms (e.g. diarrhoea, which occurs in a third of cases), which appear unrelated to pneumonia, may delay an accurate diagnosis.
Pre-disposing factors
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