Chronic Infections, and Considerations for Medical Devices and Laboratory Testing Methods - Abstract
Chronic diseases and associated chronic infections inflict an enormous clinical and economic burden on global public health. In recent years it has become increasingly evident that bacterial biofilm plays a pivotal role in chronic infections such as cystic fibrosis pneumonia, ventilatorassociated pneumonia recurrent ear infections, periodontal disease, chronic wound infections, and catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and its economic impact is alarming. Additionally, dry surface biofilm is common on hospital surfaces, often harboring antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Consequently, there is an urgent need for medical devices (such as catheters and wound dressings) and associated surfaces that can either prevent biofilm formation, or combat biofilm in chronic infections. There is also a requirement for anti-biofilm devices to be tested using laboratory methods
that are more representative of the way that bacteria predominantly exist in nature and disease (i.e., biofilm), which traditional and long-used microbiology techniques fail to account for.
The aims of this paper are to explore the relationships between chronic infections and biofilm and highlight the urgent need for anti-biofilm medical devices, and the associated laboratory testing capabilities that are required to demonstrate the effectiveness of such devices in helping to combat biofilm and chronic infections.