Gastrointestinal carriage rate of Clostridium difficile in elderly, chronic care hospital patients.

The carriage rate of Clostridium difficile in patients at a chronic care hospital was determined by two point prevalence surveys at 6-monthly intervals. In the first survey C. difficile or its toxin was present in stool samples from five symptomless patients on three of the four wards studied. All of these colonized patients had been in hospital for at least 2 months, but there was no relationship between carriage of the organism and antibiotic use. When the survey was repeated 6 months later, no symptomless carriers were found but one symptomatic patient had C. difficile and its toxin present in the stool. The results suggest that C. difficile should always be considered as a possible cause of diarrhoea in long-stay hospitalized patients.