VIDEO: Unmet needs of patients with C. difficile infection

Editor’s note: This is an automatically generated transcript, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

C diff is still continuing to rise. We are not seeing a slowdown in this infection. We’re seeing now an increase in community-acquired cases compared to hospital-acquired cases, and so it is still out there and the numbers continue to go up each year.

So, one of the unmet needs is around antibiotic stewardship and how we’re actually treating patients in medical settings. We are lending to the problem as health care providers, so antibiotic stewardship, I think, is really critically important.

I think a lot of education to patients around how to properly disinfect their homes and letting themselves continue to be in this vulnerable microbiome state — they’ve got a house full of spores, you know? I think if they aren’t educated about how to disinfect their homes, probably that lends itself to further risk of recurrence.

And then, of course, better options for preventing recurrent C. diff. We want to see that earlier in the treatment paradigm, whereas right now the traditional FMT is really offered at three or more episodes. It would be nice if we could have available options to bring that earlier, so that patients don’t have to suffer for months to eradicate this very treatable disease.