Prevalence of gastrointestinal disease caused by Clostridium difficile in a university hospital in Hungary

Abstract

A one-year survey was undertaken to investigate the frequency of diarrhoea caused by Clostridium difficile among patients in a 1200-bed university hospital in Hungary. The VIDAS (bioMérieux) toxin A detection kit was used for screening specimens for the presence of C. difficile toxin. For all other diarrhoeal specimens selected according to special criteria, cytotoxin testing was used to determine the presence of 'free toxin' in the faeces. During the study period, a total of 945 diarrhoeal faecal samples were tested for the presence of C. difficile toxin. Of 375 requested samples, 58 (18.3%) were toxin-A positive. Of the 570 remaining faecal samples selected by the laboratory, 120 (21%) proved to be toxin positive. The results showed that patients from the surgical (33.3%), internal (24%) and haematological (12.8%) wards had the greatest frequency of diarrhoea attributable to C. difficile.