LONDON: The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) has selected Canadian company Ondine Biomedical’s nasal photodisinfection technology for a three-month pilot evaluation of a universal, non-antibiotic protocol to prevent surgical site infections in spine surgery patients.
In an era of rising antimicrobial resistance (AMR), reducing infection rates with non-antibiotic technologies that do not generate AMR is an important Canadian objective.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows that surgical site infections (SSIs) are the leading cause of readmissionsi to hospital following surgery and a significant cause of post-surgical morbidity and mortality, with a 2- to 11-fold increase in the risk of mortality.ii Post-surgical infections are a greater risk for spinal surgeries, affecting up to 17% of patients and treatment can be challenging, especially with rising rates of antimicrobial resistance.
Ondine’s Steriwave™ technology for pre-surgical nasal decolonization has already been deployed in a number of Canadian hospitals, including Vancouver General and UBC Hospitals, where it has reduced post-operative infection rates for spine surgeries by 78%.
During the pilot, spine surgery patients at The Ottawa Hospital will be using Ondine’s nasal photodisinfection therapy to decolonize the nose of pathogens – viruses, bacteria, and fungi. The hospital will then evaluate a how effectively nasal photodisinfection reduces the number of SSIs, patients’ length of stay in hospital, and readmissions rates.
Carolyn Cross, Ondine’s CEO commented: “We are very pleased to be working with the spine group at The Ottawa Hospital to make our technology available to their patients. Following COVID-19, it is more important than ever to reduce patient readmission rates given the large surgery backlogs at all Canadian hospitals. Nasal decolonization has long been recommended by the World Health Organization for complex surgeries. Steriwave nasal photodisinfection enables fast, broad-spectrum efficacy, resulting in significant improvements to patient outcomes, cost savings, and bed capacity.”
