Records show that two heart transplant patients who had fungal infections and died over the past year stayed in the same room where mold was recently found in the UPMC Presbyterian cardiothoracic intensive care unit, according to a statement Thursday. The discovery of mold in toilets and behind walls earlier this month prompted the hospital to shut down the cardiothoracic ICU for cleaning and analysis by UPMC infection prevention experts and an private remediation company. The discovery of mold in the unit was made after a patient tested positive for mold in his lung tissue on Sept. 3, according to UPMC spokeswoman Wendy Zellner. "I can't remember the last case I ever had in which a mold infection was the cause of death." “We firmly believe we should have talked to the [two] families [of the deceased patients] first” before telling the public, which occurred later this week, she said. The case is confounding, Ms. Minnier said, because not only does UPMC not yet know what role the infections may have played in the two patients’ deaths, it does not know the source of the mold and whether it came from the ICU. Complicating the investigation is that preliminary testing shows that all three patients contracted a different, but related, fungal infection: rhizopus for the first patient, a heart transplant patient who died in October; rhizomucor in another heart transplant patient who died in June; and still another, lichtheimia, in the most recent patient, a lung transplant patient whose case was detected two weeks ago and who is still being treated. Another common cause of mold outbreaks, he said, is construction, or deconstruction projects, both of which have occurred at UPMC Presbyterian in recent years, including the deconstruction of the old Children’s Hospital building, which adjoined Presbyterian. In her statement, Minnier said, "Some might ask why we did not find this problem sooner. Fifteen patients remained in the ICU until they were removed last week upon the discovery of more mold in the 20-bed unit. "It's a rare circumstance when you see people who are infected with a mold infection or a fungal infection.
– A Pittsburgh hospital says it is in the midst of "a very active investigation" after two patients died in its cardiothoracic intensive care unit, which was later found to contain mold. UPMC Presbyterian Hospital's quality control chief Tami Minnier says a fungal infection first appeared on the leg of a heart transplant patient last October. A second infection was found on the buttocks of another transplant patient this past June, reports the AP; both patients died, though doctors aren't sure whether the infections caused the deaths. Hospital officials didn't connect the two cases because they occurred so far apart and the molds in each case were different, but related. Only when a third type of fungal infection was discovered in a lung transplant patient two weeks ago did hospital workers connect the dots and the ICU was closed on Sept. 3, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Though investigators found mold in toilets and behind the walls of the unit, per WTAE, experts aren't sure if it played a role in the deaths as it was a different type than those found in patients. "It's just heartbreaking," Minnier says. "I can't tell you how many hours we have already spent trying to understand it." Minnier says a total of 56 patients have stayed in the ICU over the past year. The three patients infected were among eight transplant patients. The unit's remaining 18 patients have been removed to another part of the hospital while a remediation company clears up the mold, per the Gazette. "It's a hospital, and you bring people here to get well, not to get sick and die," says the wife of a patient. A mold expert says it’s "very unusual" to see the types of fungi found in the patients in a hospital, but it's possible recent construction projects at UPMC caused an outbreak.