Mattress Screening Using Polywipes and Chromogenic Clostridium difficile Agar

A structured environmental audit of hospital mattresses was undertaken using POLYWIPE­™ sponge sampling across 13 wards, generating 130 surface specimens for Clostridioides difficile screening. The point prevalence of C. difficile contamination was low at 2.3%, with isolates recovered from a small number of mattress surfaces. POLYWIPE­™ enabled effective recovery of C. difficile and other clostridial species, demonstrating suitability for high-resolution environmental sampling. Comparative evaluation of CCEY and chromogenic C. difficile agar showed broadly equivalent sensitivity for detection of C. difficile, although CCEY demonstrated higher specificity in this dataset. These findings support the utility of POLYWIPE­™ in routine environmental surveillance and highlight their role in assessing the effectiveness of infection prevention cleaning protocols.