Number of C. diff incidents on the rise

Clostridium difficile (C. diff) infections are on the rise and hospitals see the most cases in March, with facilities in the Northeast region of the country more likely to treat the infection, reported MedPage Today. Researchers performed a retrospective study of more than 2.3 million cases of C. diff treated from 2001 to 2010 that included the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Hospital Discharge Survey. They found that eight out of every 1,000 C. diff infections came out of the Northeast, followed by 6.4 out of 1,000 in the Midwest and five cases out of 1,000 in the South. Meanwhile, the incidence of C. diff infections almost doubled from 4.5 cases per 1,000 hospital discharges in 2001 to 8.2 in 2010. There were an average of 7.6 cases of the infection per 1,000 hospital discharges in March, followed closely by 7.3 cases in May. Article