Burden of Clostridium difficile on the Healthcare System

Dubberke, Erik R.
Olsen, Margaret A.

Department of Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Missouri

Correspondence: Erik R. Dubberke, MD, MSPH, 660 S Euclid, Box 8051, St. Louis, MO 63110 ([email protected]).

Clinical Infectious Diseases 55(suppl_2):p S88-S92, August 1, 2012. | DOI: 10.1093/cid/cis335

There are few high-quality studies of the costs of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), and the majority of studies focus on the costs of CDI in acute-care facilities. Analysis of the best available data, from 2008, indicates that CDI may have resulted in $4.8 billion in excess costs in US acute-care facilities. Other areas of CDI-attributable excess costs that need to be investigated are costs of increased discharges to long-term care facilities, of CDI with onset in long-term care facilities, of recurrent CDI, and of additional adverse events caused by CDI.